I am often asked what a narrative cookbook is. And I smile.
A narrative cookbook is a cookbook that tells a story. If you think about all the different kinds of cookbooks there are, you’ll note that some of them just give recipes and hints about food. Narrative cookbooks have recipes, along with stories about the food, history, the people making the food, and so on. The Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Cookbook: A Lifetime of Recipes from the Shenandoah Valley tell the story of Mrs. Rowe’s life, restaurant, food, and give some local history. It tells the story through overlapping techniques—the main one in the narrative that flows throughout the book, which is accented by photo captions, sidebars, recipe head notes.
So.
A narrative cookbook is what it says it is. 😉 A cookbook that tells a story. Any other thoughts about that?
