Erotic cookbooks and romantic baking – finally we get to the meat of our cookbook obsession. (Okay, the puns stop here. We’re sorry.)

Kali and Annie dive down into the history of cookbooks and then they take a look at the erotic cookbooks of the 1970s and the ways that writers use food to set the stage in popular fiction.

This is the beginning of our series on cookbooks, we will absolutely do Part 2. So please send us your food literature obsessions to InkSinkPodcast@gmail.com.

Warning: There is cursing in this episode. Servants in the olden days had some sh** to deal with.

Some of our sources for this episode:

·       The Folger Shakespeare Library’s exhibit on consumerism in London in the 1500s-1700s: https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Consuming_Splendor:_Luxury_Goods_in_England,_1580%E2%80%931680

·       The History of Cookbooks and Where We Are Today, UCLAHCI https://eatwell.healthy.ucla.edu/2021/03/08/the-history-of-cookbooks-and-where-we-are-today/

·       A cool look into early cookbooks: The Library of Congress has a cookbook that was presented to Queen Elizabeth I, purporting to be from 1390, published in the 1700s: https://www.loc.gov/item/44031282/

·       Apropos of nothing: Here’s a horror movie about Winnie the Pooh that was made as soon as Pooh got into the public domain. We’re pretty sure they did this just because they knew Disney couldn’t sue them for it? We are constantly in awe of the human race’s capacity for ridiculous things! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19623240/

·       Using cookbooks to study genealogy and local history: https://repository.ifla.org/bitstream/123456789/2793/1/s07-2023-brannock-en.pdf

·       Food "fakelore" has been a part of cookbooks going back centuries: https://daily.jstor.org/the-fakelore-of-food-origins/

·       A deep dive on cooking in anime: Why Anime About Food and Cooking Became So Popular: https://www.cbr.com/gourmet-anime-genre-about-food-cooking-eating-why-popular/

·       Many cookbooks come from book packagers, which is a business you can hear more about in our episode about why you’re wrong about Goosebumps: https://theinksink.substack.com/p/book-packaging-why-youre-wrong-about

·       And yes, of course, we have a link to Anime with Alvin – a show where a chef recreates dishes from anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcLTe8MoAV4&list=PLopY4n17t8RAHz5OSGQP6I9z7UZqAZ4WW

·       Check out Quincy’s Tavern and support fellow podcast creators! https://www.quincystavern.xyz/

·       And check out some of the themed cookbooks we talked about here: https://bookshop.org/lists/pop-culture-takes-over-cookbooks

·       Esquire's review of the 1961 Playboy cookbook: https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a21050/playboy-cookbook-food-15268930/

·       A history of erotic cookbooks from Eater: https://www.eater.com/23160117/erotic-cookbooks-history-sexuality-playboy

·       What’s the Point of Food in Fiction? by Adam Gopnick: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/09/cooked-books

·       "This Wizard of the Cooking Stove": How P.G. Wodehouse Contributed to the Field of Gastronomy Through Anatole, the French Chef, in the Jeeves-and-Wooster Series: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ejfds/vol1/iss2/5/

·       Romance Novels Are Increasingly Getting Hot and Heavy in the Kitchen by Bettina Makalintal: https://www.eater.com/23188870/summer-romance-novels-baking-cooking

Are you ready to diversify your kitchen? See our list of cookbooks by marginalized authors here! https://bookshop.org/lists/diversify-your-kitchen

00:00 Welcome Back! 01:32 Corrections Corner 03:11 We’re Talking About Cookbooks! 06:37 The History of Writing Down Food Stuff 18:48 Where Do the Ladies Fit In? 23:26 Pop Culture Takes Over 31:33 Time for Some Erotic Cookbooks 40:12 Food in Romance and Pop Fiction 46:27 Kali Coda 47:06 Thanks for Listening!