An appreciation of the nation's most-loved books - cookbooks
Our appetite for cookbooks is insatiable. The biggest-selling book in New Zealand of all time is, of course, that perennial classic, The Edmonds Cookbook. As well, the three biggest-selling books in New Zealand in 2010, 2014 and last year were all cookbooks, by Annabel Langbein (The Free Range Cook, and Free Range Cook: Through the Seasons) and Chelsea Winter, with Supergood.
Langbein has written more than 30 books in her career, including a memoir; she’s sold close to three million books so far. The Free Range Cook sold 160,000 copies here and was translated into five languages. Younger writers like Chelsea Winter and Nadia Lim seem on track to similar heights. Winter has sold just over 195,000 books, according to Nielsen BookScan, in the eight years since her first cookbook was published.
And yet cookbooks are sometimes or often dismissed as lightweight. "Mother's Day literature", scorned Newsroom's books editor Steve Braunias, in a recent write-up of the weekly best-seller charts.
Wellington writer Lucy Corry has worked on several cookbooks, such as the 2021 Ockham New Zealand book awards winner of best book of illustrated non-fiction, Monique Fiso’s Hiakai. Her own recipe book Homecooked will be released in October. She has strong ideas why cookbooks are perceived as second-rate literature.
“I largely think it's because cookbooks are associated with the domestic sphere, and they're associated with women," she says. "Any books written specifically for a female audience are thought of as not very clever; written with lots of pictures and small words, so women with our small brains can understand them. It's a bit like the genre formerly known as chick lit. You know, they’re pretty stories for ladies. Cookbooks are the same.”
“Whenever something is perceived to be for women, it very quickly gets perceived to be frivolous"
Penguin Random House New Zealand’s head of publishing Claire Murdoch agrees. She says there’s a strong element of old-fashioned sexism at play.
“Whenever something is perceived to be for women, it very quickly gets perceived to be frivolous and something that you can make fun of and something of very low value,” she says.
“I'm just going to call that out as out-and-out classic, dirty old sexism.
“You can't on the one hand task 50 percent of society for centuries with feeding their families and make that part of their identity and then have a go at them when they buy books to help them do it and get some inspiration.”
Not all cookbook authors, of course, can write well.
“There are poorly written recipe books out there, just as there are poorly written novels and poorly written sports biographies”, says Corry. “But the good ones stand the test of time.”
Cookbooks enrich our lives and carry our history in a way other books don’t. They’re among the most likely books to be passed down from generation to generation. They can be cultural and historical artefacts.
Corry treasures her collection of what she terms ‘community’ cookbooks; collections put together for charity groups, schools and institutions. One of her favourites is a Plunkett book from the 1950s, Triple Tested Recipes. “The previous owner has this beautiful cursive handwriting, and she has written all over the inside cover. And some recipes she’s put a cross through saying, no, not this one, or she’s written notes to add more of this here or there. To me, it’s like this primary resource that's genius.”
A funny thing happens, Annabel Langbein reckons, when we use a recipe that turns out to be a dud. And it’s different to how we feel when we read a boring work of fiction. We take it to heart. “When a recipe doesn't work, you don't think: well, that's a crap recipe. You feel personally a failure.”
Langbein thinks the accessibility of recipes online might have played a part in lowering the status of cookbook writers. Millions of recipes a day are being posted, to the point, she says, where “recipes are so widely available that they’re almost devalued”.
"The ordinary bystander has no idea of the amount of work that goes into a cookbook. It’s a bit like we have no idea of the amount of training that goes into being a rugby player or a ballet dancer"
There’s a perception, perhaps, that anyone can do it. “Bloggers and vloggers and basically anyone can publish recipes,” Langbein says, though she notes there’s no way of knowing how good they are. “They are not necessarily going through a due diligence process.”
A well-written cookbook, far from being dashed off, has been truly crafted. As Lucy Corry says, “The ordinary bystander or reader would have no idea of the amount of work that goes into a cookbook. It’s a bit like we have no idea of the amount of training that goes into being a rugby player or a ballet dancer or a musician. The pages you see are the end result of months, if not years, of work by a huge group of people.”
In the case of the award-winning Hiakai, that group included not only chef Fiso, but also Corry, editing, researching via “many trips” to the National Library, and what she describes as “translating” the terminology of chefs into something accessible to a home cook.
Another food writer, AUT Professor of Culinary Arts, Dr Tracy Berno, whose work has focused on the food cultures of the Pacific, contributed extensive research. Hiakai also involved the work and skill of several photographers, stylists and many of Fiso’s kitchen team. “It was hugely collaborative,” Corry says.
Langbein describes her writing process in similar terms: working and re-working; collaborating; crafting.
“Often it starts very creatively, where I'll make something out of my head, and as I'm making it, I'll jot notes down. And then it's quite iterative; you come back to it and you go, okay, I'm going to make that again, from a written recipe.”
Iterations continue, she says, tasting and honing along the way. “You keep refining and editing it until you get it tasting the way that you want it and timed the way you want it.” At this stage, collaboration and sense checking starts. “It goes to someone else to make, so you know you haven't made any assumptions. And then it goes into an editing process, usually with two people who will look at it and make sure it makes sense.”
"A recipe is essentially a narrative tale. There are actors and reactors and a narrative arc from beginning to end and hopefully a happy ending"
Corry speaks of recipe writing in storytelling terms: “It's like writing any story. A recipe is essentially a narrative tale. There are actors and reactors and a narrative arc from beginning to end and hopefully a happy ending, or a spectacular ending, even. A good recipe writer needs to not only explain the characters and really step the reader through what all of those things do and why, they also need to do it in a way that has a bit of personality.”
A good cookbook, Corry reckons, is one you refer back to over time, and over time it becomes part of your own cooking history; your own story.
Langbein thinks deeply about her role as a recipe writer, seeing it as not only inspiring her readers and creating confidence, but also creating connections. When we’re cooking, we’re doing a lot more than just getting food on the table, she believes.
“I think cooking connects you to nature, because practically everything you might want to eat starts out as a seed or a spore, and it's going to take weeks or months or sometimes years before it's ready to harvest or be eaten. And it connects you to your own culture and other cultures; and it connects you to your family and friends. And it also connects you to your creativity. It's a very nourishing thing.”
Corry thinks a good cookbook is an immersive, mindful experience that can't be replicated by looking up a recipe online.
“Like everybody else, I use my phone to look things up, but I loathe reading recipes on my phone; having mucky hands and scrolling, or looking something up and then not being able to find it again, or being interrupted by popups. A cookbook is really an exercise in mindfulness.”
At an even deeper level, Langbein suggests cookbooks can help us create order and meaning in a chaotic world. “I think it is really difficult for lots of people to feel successful in their daily lives because of pressures and money and resources and all sorts of other things. But cooking is a very simple way to have a sense of ownership of your life; of sharing and connecting and feeling validated and useful.”
The very best cookbooks are works you want to really read. Writers like Nigella Lawson are incredibly talented storytellers. Claire Murdoch at Penguin speaks of Corry in these terms, too. “She's a true writer and she's a writer first and foremost. So her book is a book to be read from cover to cover.
"It's just a pleasure to read because she's a writer at the top of her game, as well as somebody who's been thinking intensely and carefully and thoughtfully about food and what it means - her whole life. As well as being a brilliant recipe writer, she's just a writer writer. It's such a good read.”
Every home with books includes cookbooks. As Murdoch points out, “The same person who’s reading amazing, edgy New Zealand novelists and memoir writers might also read mass market fiction, and you might also read New Zealand cookbooks. Most of us do more than one of those things.”
There are three cookbooks in the most recent Nielsen best-seller chart for New Zealand non-fiction: Eat Well for Less New Zealand by Michael Van de Elzen & Ganesh Raj (Penguin Random House, $35), The Forager's Treasury by Johanna Knox (Allen & Unwin, $45), and Supergood by Chelsea Winter (Penguin Random House, $50), all available in bookstores nationwide.
