Don't Quit your Day Job

    Much of my July was like a muggier East Coast Shining, filled with day-job related wrassling with the history of the concept of authorship -- briefly, the Iliad is not by Homer in the same way that Digital Fortress is by Dan Brown. My interest lies in the middle, and involves people getting their ears cut off, but I've promised myself not to blog about work. Anyway, the FT, via TFS, is interested in the same question, as it relates to cookbooks:

Some of the most famous cookery writers in the US and the UK couldn't publish a usable book without extensive help. Of those who do write the first draft, about a third need substantial rewriting. This figure comes from a highly experienced source who has worked with many of the most famous namesin UK food publishing -and who stoutly defends the practice. "These people have something importantto contribute: their own unique way of cooking. Their recipes are original. The words are not; that's what we contribute."

Actually, chances are the receipts are not original. There are very few new dishes that emerge fully formed from the brow of their creator--99.9% of the time, a receipt is a refinement/reinterpretation of an existing idea. However, this notion of the receipt as the secret formula to be jealously guarded is popular--viz the video for Body Movin',  a Diabolik sendup where a French onion dip receipt is treated as if it were the launch code for Poseidon missles. No big surprise there, but this idea of originality does raise some useful questions about what cookbooks are for:

Not everyone in the field agrees. Jill Norman, long-time cookery editor at Penguin (she was Elizabeth David's editor) and now a distinguished author herself, would never have taken on an author who needed such substantial rewriting. "People who need this help should stick to cooking," she believes. If it's argued that their cooking is unique, she would want to see "how good they are". And there's no law that says chefs can't be good writers. Norman has recently edited a book (The Cook's Book, Dorling Kindersley) with chapters contributed by more than 20 distinguished chefs, of whom the great majority did all their own writing.

"Elizabeth David's editor" carries some clout with me, and the result of this approach to cookbook publishing would mean fewer cookbooks, which would not be a bad thing. Unfortch, as the article points out, the point of buying a cookbook is not to have the definitive minestrone receipt:

It's hard to understand the reticence about owning up to ghostwriting. If tennis players aren't assumed to be good writers, why should we expect that skill of cooks? The problem is that in our celebrity-obsessed age, readers of cookbooks don't just want recipes that work. They also buy into a dubious notion of personality. They're not just looking for minestrone, they're looking for X's minestrone. Eager to have their kitchen touched by his magic, they probably don't realise that authorship of the recipe is sometimes debatable. This question wouldn't make a bit of difference if the personal imprimatur of the celebrated author weren't the unique selling point of the recipe.

Actually, this is not the question. The question is why every proprietor of an eating place that does not serve hash browns expects/is expected to write a cookbook. For instance, I imagine that one of these days, someone will talk Tony Maws into writing a cookbook. Many of these bistro-influenced dishes will be similar to those in Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook. As a source of information about how to cook steak au poivre, Bourdain's book is manifestly inessential, as Rose's Lime observed. This information is widely available in cookbooks you already own--if you shell out for this book it's because you dig the way Bourdain explains how to cook bistro standards.

To this end, it might be more useful to think about writing most cookbooks as an enterprise more akin to recording an album of Cole Porter songs than it is like writing a novel.  It is a question of interpretation, rather than invention. I'm undecided whether this makes ghostwriting more or less acceptable.

Comments

[sam]

Of all the recipe books I have purchased in the last few years, the Jill Norman-edited The Cook's Book is my favourite. It's a grat example of what a good cook book should be.

Variety of cuisine, classic and new techniques, traditional and modern, global and with wonderful photographs clearly showing the different stages of a recipe.

I can't recommend it highly enough!

[debra van Culiblog]

Shit, I seem to have quit my day job.