New publishing trend: Cookbooks with impossible recipes to execute
October 25, 2013 by Lindsay
The Telegraph recently issued a bit of a diatribe against Heston Blumethal’s new book, Historic Heston. In the article, Heston Blumenthal’s new book: These faux cookbooks leave me simmering, they write, “The book itself is beautifully designed, bound, slip-cased and illustrated. As must be evident, you can’t really use it to cook from at home. Not only is the domestic batterie de cuisine not up to the job; who has the time for such labour-intensive preparations?” They further comment: “But these difficult/impossible cookery books are not exclusive to Heston. Indeed, they represent a cutting-edge publishing trend.”
For an EYB perspective, we thought we’d turn the podium over to one of our indexing gurus who has a strong opinion on the subject. Her comment?
“I personally have no patience for these kinds of books, but I’m sure others find them very inspiring. I recently pro-indexed World-Class Swedish Cooking and almost ripped my hair out! It’s one of those books where they wax poetic about the food with little-to-no real instructions on how to actually make the dishes, yet still call them “recipes” — and it all just sounds so complicated…. The specific books mentioned in this article seem to provide more instructions, but are so over-the-top I really wonder if anyone short of a professional chef with a restaurant kitchen could actually find them useful!”
Obviously, these types of cookbooks can touch a nerve. So please weigh in: Can these types of cookbooks, i.e. cookbooks which include recipes few if any home cooks can tackle – find a place on your cookbook shelf?
Telegraph photo by Andrew Crowley
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