Inspired by his acquisition of 19th-century cookbooks from a Sotheby's auction, food writer and BBC personality William Sitwell has amassed a wonderfully entertaining miscellany in A History of Food in 100 Recipes, complete with observations that blend the historical commentary of an Alton Brown with the gastronomic wisdom of a Jeffrey Steingarten.
Stillwell's anthology starts with bread recipes gleaned from Egyptian hieroglyphs and ends with the rise of modern celebrity chefs and the revival of ancient cooking methods, albeit with a modern twist. He cites the first formal mentions of foods we take for granted today, such as the desserts found in Genesis and the cheesecakes of the ancient Greeks. We learn of the formal references to pasta by Arabic cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi before Italy claimed the dish as its own, as well as Renaissance-era cookbooks and party-planning guides. Catherine di Medici's introduction of Italian recipes and cooking methods to France gave birth to French gastronomy, while William Kitchener's early 19th-century standardized measurements and food-handling methods enabled others to tailor cookbooks for wide audiences.
Despite its compactness, A History of Food in 100 Recipes is a cleverly constructed, gastronomic and scholarly heavyweight, a compendium of international cooking techniques that have spurred many a modern chef to fame and fortune--and a treasure that any cook (or non-cook) would appreciate. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant