If you’re a fan of cookbooks, you’ll have come across or at least heard of Irma S. Rombauer’s cookbook Joy of Cooking. Now in its eighth edition, this American classic has sold over eighteen million copies since it first appeared in the 1930s. But did you know that its very first edition, released in 1931, was self-published by the author?
“The amateur but highly evolved enthusiasm that Irma Rombauer brought to the world of home cooking,” writes Cook’s Illustrated founder and editor Christopher Kimball in an homage to the cookbook on www.thejoykitchen.com, “was a breath of fresh air... Ms Rombauer was there to hold our hold our hands...leaping past the narrow formality of the Victorian age.”
There is something very special about the enthusiastic amateur. This affectionate description of Rombauer’s approach reminds me of the early days of food blogging, when people posted their thoughts on their favourite recipes accompanied by photographs of questionable quality. This was before food bloggers became food stylists and photographers, before book deals with publishers and the age of digital influencers.
Don’t get me wrong. I like this new age of blogging and the opportunities it has opened up for many of my peers and I. And to this day anyone can start a food blog. Yet, I occasionally feel a pang of nostalgia for a time (all of seven years ago!) when food bloggers, myself included, were enthusiastic amateurs happily sharing truly authentic scenes from our kitchens, rather than curated, tweaked and filtered content, our appetites now focused on likes, page views and publishing deals.
The self-published cookbook has never fallen out of favour with schools, and the cookbook remains a worthy fundraising endeavour for schools all over the country, such as Aston Village Educate Together National School in County Louth, or Mount Temple National School outside of Moate.
Nessa Robins, food blogger at Nessa’s Family Kitchen and author of cookbook Apron Strings (published in 2013 by New Island), helped the children at Mount Temple National School to create a beautiful cookbook in 2016, called Templelicious (www.facebook.com/Templelicious). Her children are both past and present students, so Robins worked alongside teachers to host workshops with the students on how to write recipes and style photographs for the cookbook.
It’s not just schoolchildren who are following Rombauer’s early example. Diane Jacob, food writing coach and author of the best-selling self-published Will Write For Food, offers advice for self-publishing authors on her website diannej.com. Crowd-funding is another interesting avenue for food writers looking to take control of their own output. Irish food writer Margaret Hickey told the story of her crowd-funding cookbook project, The Green Larder (https://unbound.com/books/irelands-green-larder), a history of Irish cooking in The Irish Times in late 2016. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/a-crowdfunded-history-of-irish-cooking-1.2913265
Just before Christmas, I received a present from a reader that really moved me. It was a self-published cookbook named Cookbook as Farce: Coomhola Granola and Other Stories written by Mark Boyden. Boyden lives near Bantry in West Cork and is the Project Director of StreamScapes, an aquatic and biodiversity education programme (www.streamscapes.ie). It was his eldest daughter Rhea who encouraged him to write the cookbook and Boyden figured it would make a nice Christmas present for friends and family. “We really must douse any expectation,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “this is merely a chronicle of a simple country kitchen.”
In Cookbook as Farce, there are grainy photographs of family and friends gathered around the author’s treasured kitchen table, and other photographs of dinner guests licking plates clean. There are poorly lit, unfocused snaps of cooked ham and a solemn portrait of the Stanley wood-fired range, which Boyden cooks on for most of the year. There are recipes for sage vegetable gravy, chep lasagna, pickled shallots and mother’s cookies. The recipes are part instruction, part memoir, vessels for Boyden to share some of his life’s adventures such as the time he ate goulash on a train from Munich to Prague. This book is full of the joy of cooking.
When I ask Boyden over email to tell me about the editing process for his book, he tells me that, because of his experience as editor for educational books at StreamScapes, he was “able to produce a decent first draft in terms of spelling, punctuation, etc. Though the ‘k’ key on my keyboard is struggling so there may still be a few ‘k’s’ missing. Then, I brought in my old English teacher (from 50 years ago!), Dave Campbell, to do a final edit and he made 174 recommendations which I ignored apart from two.”
I have really enjoyed reading this cookbook, partly because of Boyden’s self-deprecating wit, but also because of the under-styled photographs, rather than despite them. This is an honest look into a real kitchen. In his own words, Boyden’s cookbook “offers a whimsical glimpse inside an obscure and unremarkable West Cork kitchen... This book will not change your life... in fact; it will redouble your determination to keep it just the way it is.” It may not take the commercial cookbook world by storm, but what a treasure for Boyden’s friends and family to have.
Due to interest from outside of his immediate circle, Boyden has put a very limited run of copies of Cookbook As Farce on sale at his local bookshop, Bantry Bookshop (www.bantrybookshop.com), for €12.50 (+ postage and packaging). Contact Margaret O’Neill at 027-55946 or bantrybooks@msn.com to enquire after a copy.
In the book’s preface, John McKenna writes that Cookbook As Farce “belongs in that great tradition: the tradition of the amateur cook.” So, here’s to our enthusiastic amateurs and our self-starting experts. May they remind us of the joy of cooking and the different avenues we have of communicating it.
