Invention of the Modern Cookbook

This eye-opening history will change the way you read a cookbook or regard a TV chef, making cooking ventures vastly more interesting—and a lot more fun.Every kitchen has at least one well-worn cookbook, but just how did they come to be? Invention of the Modern Cookbook is the first study to examine that question, discussing the roots of these collections in 17th-century England and illuminating the cookbook's role as it has evolved over time.Readers will discover that cookbooks were the product of careful invention by highly skilled chefs and profit-minded publishers who designed them for maximum audience appeal, responding to a changing readership and cultural conditions and utilizing innovative marketing and promotion techniques still practiced today. They will see how cookbooks helped women adjust to the changes of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution by educating them on a range of subjects from etiquette to dealing with household servants. And they will learn how the books themselves became "modern," taking on the characteristics we now take for granted.Numerous recipes and quotations from original manuscripts from the 17th and 18th centuriesA substantial timeline ranging from 1500 to 1800, describing the major events in culinary historyDozens of original period prints by well-known artists relating to food, plus images from major culinary textsA glossary of foreign and specialized culinary terms A selected bibliography including electronic resources to help readers find primary and secondary materials relating to culinary history

"Food historian Sandra Sherman looks into the present-day fascination with cookbooks and celebrity chefs, showing how the modern cookbook has roots going back as far as 17th-century England. She shows how even the first cookbooks were the product of careful invention by highly skilled chefs and profit-minded publishers who designed them for maximum audience appeal. Sherman describes how cookbook writers and publishers kept ahead of changes in readership and cultural conditions by using marketing and promotion techniques that are still practiced today, and she shows how they ultimately developed cookbooks with the 'modern' characteristics that we take for granted today. While the author’s writing style is a bit on the academic side, jargon is kept to a minimum, making this book suitable both for academics and adventurous general readers." - Reference & Research Book News, "Recommended. Large academic libraries serving upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty." - Choice

Sandra Sherman, PhD, is a food historian, attorney, and assistant director at the Intellectual Property Law Institute, Fordham University.