Cookbooks for Aliens
TL;DR: I made a big list of the most comprehensive cookbooks from every country. [0]
There seem to be two basic types of cookbooks in the world. The first kind is a cookbook where the author makes most of the choices for you. This represents 99 percent of what you see on a bookstore’s shelves in the cooking section; they are books that include roughly 50 to 150 curated recipes, often with the author’s own unique way of preparing the dish (e.g. use fish sauce in your bolognese for more umami! and similar).
When you buy one these cookbooks, often you do it specifically because you want to see what the author has decided for you. That’s why I bought Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi, for example. That’s why you buy The Food Lab by Kenji.
And then there is the second kind of cookbook: the Book of Reference.
These are near-comprehensive books about one topic, usually the cuisine from a country or region. In the Book of Reference the author does not make little decisions for you; putting fish sauce in your bolognese is a tweak you can figure out on your own. Rather, a Book of Reference presents the basic way to make something, provides scant instructions, and leaves you to it.
These are comprehensive cooking bibles.
Among these books are Dona Benta: Comer Bem, perhaps one of the most delicious books in the entire world, 1080 Recetas de Cocina, the Spanish cookbook, Il Cucchiaio d’argento, the book to read if you like Italian food, El Libro de Doña Petroña, an Argentinian classic, and others.
Most countries seem to have produced a clear winner in the Book of Reference category over the past century or so. Which brings me to this little project:
Cookbooks for Aliens.
The idea was simple: if aliens landed on Earth and asked about our cuisine, which book would each country send them? This proved more difficult than I imagined for a few reasons, chiefly that not all countries are the same and so not all of them actually have a great book. But I have included the 100+ countries that I believe do have a good “cookbook of reference.”
I hope you can find a book you find interesting. A great cookbook can be a door to another world; a peek inside a culture and a place you may never really know. So if any book on the list seems interesting, I’d encourage you to find it.
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[0] Not every country is represented here because I couldn’t find a great book for every country. If you know of one for a country not on the list, email us and let usk now.
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