Regional Cooking from Middle-Earth: Recipes of the Third Age (More randomness)

[radiantfracture]

Have you got a favorite in the genre of Literary Cookbooks?

Or -- though this is a separate genre and a bit out of fashion now -- Those Novels with Recipes in Them? (See Like Water for Chocolate.)

I have a cherished book produced two decades ago through the print-on-demand place, called Regional Cooking from Middle-Earth: Recipes of the Third Age.

The cookbook is divided regionally -- Shire, Bree, Regions of Rohan, etc., and also has an Index by Season. I think all the recipes are given both in English and in the local languages. It is the very exemplar of a labour of love.

I am almost certain I have never cooked anything from this book, but I feel happier knowing I could. There are three kinds of lembas. The recipes are simple and practical. There is a rabbit stew. Tarcoron, "high mound" is better know in this age as Yorkshire Pudding.

Why the question

I was thinking of trying to make batch cooking feel more appealing by making it literary-flavoured. I did once make a pretty passable Boeuf en Daube for a party.

(So the Surrealist Cookbook would be unhelpful in this instance. I want to make real food for my real body to eat. I just want to eat some ideas at the same time.)

--any edible and palatable crossover would do, really. Cheers!

(For example, I count New England Spider Cake as literary because I learnt it from a post by sovay .)

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Comments

[wordweaverlynn]

Nora Ephron's HEARTBURN included recipes. They're supposed to be quite good.

If you enjoy Patrick O'Brian's novels about the British Navy in the days of Napoleon, you'll love LOBSCOUSE AND SPOTTED DOG. A mother-daughter team researched recipes for all the food mentioned in the Aubrey-Maturin novels and ate the results. The cookbook includes the recipes and snippets of the original descriptions, as well as reviews of the food. (Turns out that rats are surprisingly tasty.) It was a joy to read.

Nanny Ogg, of Discworld fame, wrote a cookbook called THE JOYE OF SNACKS. You can actually buy Nanny Ogg's Cookbook: A Useful and Improving Almanack of Information Including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Again, great fun to read, and I understand that the recipes are all edible.

[radiantfracture]

This is just what I'm looking for -- thank you! I think I will have to commit the O'Brian tie-in.

I'd forgotten about Heartburn. I wonder if she originated that device in its full-recipe format. Hmm.