A Cute but Unnecessary Book

 

Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake: A Compendium of Classic Authors’ Favourite Recipes.
Arbitrarily photographed with some eggs in my kitchen that were going into an omelet that was probably better than anything in the book.

Collections of recipes by famous people appeal to many readers. Many such collections have been published, sometimes by asking the famous people to contribute recipes, and sometimes by finding their recipes already published somewhere else — maybe in a journal or in letters, maybe in a novel. Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake is such a collection with recipes already published in similar anthologies. When I heard about it, I ordered it because it sounded really good and I thought that in some way, it would be original. It isn’t. I am somewhat disappointed.

The sources of the recipes in this new book are mainly recipes from earlier collections — sometimes it seems to be kind of a cannibalized work. Here are the covers of some of the sources cited in the afterward to the work:

Where to find writers’ favorite recipes? Look in earlier collections of writers’ recipes.
Most of the books depicted above are now out of print and costly. I found the images by searching the web. I own only one of these books (though I also own some similar collections).

Big Question: do these sound like good recipes? Would you want to use them to make dinner or a special treat for guests? Well, not really. After all, most of the authors whose work is included were not at all cooks. Some of them even say they weren’t very good in the kitchen, though some of the recipes are quite plausible, if ordinary. For example, Allen Ginsberg’s Cold Summer Beet Borscht is almost exactly like the borscht my mother made. Christopher Isherwood’s “Brownies Wendy” are simply the most standard classic brownies (the ones my seventh-grade cooking class was assigned to make). Tennessee Williams’s Grits are pretty undistinguished from the usual southern favorite. Barbara Pym’s Marmalade is ordinary as well. Not much to see here —  though at least these are interesting authors, so maybe it’s nice to know what they might have cooked.

A few recipes are distinguished by their unappealing nature: these are recipes that I would never try and in fact they are by authors that I would probably never read:

• Noel Streatfield’s Filets de Boeuf aux Bananas contains beef, bananas, horseradish, parsley… no thanks. Also, I had never heard of Noel Streatfield (1895-1986), author of children’s books, but now I have. 
• Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Devils on Horseback are made from bacon wrapped around prunes that are stuffed with olives stuffed with pimentos. I guess these were popular back in the day — this author was born in 1923. I have a feeling that her books are also forgotten, along with her style of cooking.
• Spike Milligan’s Spaghetti Dolce is spaghetti with cream, sugar, and brandy. Another unappealing recipe by another forgotten writer.

Fun fact: Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake has no listed author: it was put together by the staff of the publisher, Faber. The more I think about it, the more it seems to be a rather cynical hack job. While some of the authors may be interesting, many are deservedly obscure, and they have no actual connection to one another, aside from the fact that at some point they published recipes. I think the book’s reason for existing is just to make a bit more money off the same old material, and, like the title itself, is meant to attract attention in a shallow kind of way. If you already have any collections of recipes by writers and artists, you probably don’t need this one.

Better Celebrity Cookbooks

 I have quite a few celebrity recipe collections on my shelves. I also have several recipe books by famous authors, where they shared their recipes along with maybe a few anecdotes about dinner parties or meals shared with other famous people. The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Gertrude Stein’s companion, written after Stein’s death, is probably the most famous (and to me wonderful) of such celebrity cookbook. 

Memorably, Peter Sellers’  1968 film “I love you Alice B. Toklas” made reference to the Hash Brownies recipe included in this book. The film is surely forgotten by now, but this cookbook was consequently even more famous at that time.

Plots & Pans: Recipes and Antidotes from The Mystery Writers of America promises “Hundreds of Delicious Recipes from the Most Imaginative Writers in America — Spiced with their Wit, Leavened with their Malice, and Served with their Own Distinctive Style.” Published in 1989, this book is still in print and available. The illustrations are amusing.

I have around a dozen other recipe books featuring work by various authors. Some were compiled later, and the recipes are reconstructed from brief mentions in an author’s works; for example: a Jane Austen cookbook or an Agatha Christie cookbook, by authors who didn’t participate in making the book. I also have several by authors who were interested in food as well as detective fiction or other fiction. 

Bottom line: you can do better than the recently published book!