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10 Overly Specific Cookbooks

Cookbooks for very specific subsets of subsets of subsets of eaters.

Raych Krueger

Staff Writer

Raych has so many kids (like, two, but they’re super young, which makes it seem like there are more of them) and this really cuts into her reading time. She’s using her degrees in Early Childhood Education and English Literature to teach the toddler to read to the baby so she can get back to her trashy Victorian sensation novel, or whatever. She’s also teaching her kids to travel and eat broadly, mostly through example (Do As I Do is super important, you guys), and hasn’t gone a year without hopping on a plane since she was a teenager. She recently moved from the Canadian coast to the Canadian prairies, where it gets hella cold, and if not for the internet, she’d surely be dead. Blog: Books I Done Read Twitter: @raychraych

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Sep 9, 2015

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I rarely use cookbooks because hello yes I have internet. Also because cookbooks be all like, How To Cook Everything and I am like, we live in a global village of ingredients, my dude Mark Bittman, I’m sure you don’t mean everything (disclaimer: I have not read HtCE and do not know Mark Bittman’s life so maybe he does in fact mean ‘everything’). I mean, there’s still a place for The Joy of Cooking if you’re like 15 and completely clueless in the kitchen, but even then I’d opt for something like Clueless in the Kitchen: A Cookbook for Teens and Other Beginners. via GIPHY Or just very literal ‘Clueless: In the Kitchen’ gifs. Precision. PRECISION is the key in 2015. Not just a mechanic, but a heavy-duty-farm-equipment mechanic. Not just a stock photo of a man cooking, but a stock photo of a Bored Man in Bathrobe Baking a Stuffed Monkey and Holding a Glass of Wine while the Oven is on Fire. Not just cooking exclusively from Trader Joe’s, but also when you can’t eat gluten.

Or you’re cooking for one but also you only have a microwave.

OH LOOK YOU HAVE OPTIONS.

Soooooo many options.

Or like you not only want all your food to be edible pockets, which is actually really specific in itself, but you’re sworn to eat nada but empanadas.

Or you really only want to eat what hypothetical future space explorers and aliens eat, but you don’t have a replicator (or whatever, I definitely don’t understand how spacefood works).

Or you’re a vegetarian but literally the only condiment you own is sriricha.

Or you’re cooking with children (like as helpers, not ingredients), but AUGH ALL OF THE CHILDREN ARE SPECIFICALLY BOYS. I assume each recipe includes a step where you have to stir it with your penis?

Or all you own is a waffle iron but you still want some bibimbap and a filet mignon.

Maybe you have some extremely bookish lesbians coming for dinner!

Whatever your particular gustatorial challenge, cookbooks have got you covered. What’s the most specific cookbook you’ve ever seen?

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