I love books; cookbooks in particular. Cookbooks, to me, represent the origins of economics, Greek oikonomia, home management, scarcity and value of goods. Cookbooks represent an economic revolution from bread and cheese to warm brioche and marmalade, a transformation of the quotidian. So I pass along an historical list of cookbooks that I stole entirely from the special 2008 Christmas double issue of the Economist. I will have to add my own modern list of favorite cookbooks sometime later. Excerpts or wholes of the older texts may be available free online, but I linked the titles to best choice Amazon.com versions. Cookbooks that changed the world:
"Pluck a Flamingo" - Economist
De Re Coquinara, Apicius (circa 400 CE)
The Book of Household Management, Isabella Beeton (1859-1861)
A Gift to Young Housewives, Elena Molokhovets (1861)
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Farmer (1884)
Le Guide Culinaire, Auguste Escoffier (1902)
Mediterranean Food, Elizabeth David (1950)
"Food for Thought" - Economist (not a reading list, but another good article)
Barilla, after 90 years of being the world's biggest pasta-maker, became perhaps the world's greatest gastronomical library. The Academia Barilla, designed by Renzo Piano – renowned architect whose High Museum renovation premiere lecture we attended along with Noel Porter – is now the home of a library of ancient cookbooks and menus as well as an instructional theatre and classrooms. If you're planning a vacation to Parma, Italy, plan a trip here.
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