FROM SALVADOR DALI’S COLLECTED RECIPES to Nostradamus’s treatise on jam, the world is full of unusual cookbooks. Last week, we asked Gastro Obscura readers to send in their own. We were blown away by the response: 117 of you wrote in with cookbook suggestions, and hundreds more contributed through social media. You told us about (modernized) cookbooks from Ancient Rome, cookbooks lovingly annotated by your grandparents, and cookbooks filled with treasured (but vintage) recipes from another era. Unusual ingredients abounded: bugs, flowers, and Jell-O in every color of the rainbow.
Most of you found your unorthodox cookbook at a yard, church, or estate sale. “I couldn’t leave without it,” was a common refrain. Other cookbooks were not out of the ordinary, but had a special story. Surprisingly, a number of readers wrote about the same cookbook. Who knew so many of you owned A Thousand Ways To Please a Husband, complete with illustrations and poems? Or the “historical” cookbook that includes Virgin Mary’s favorite recipe for creamed spinach? Whether dead serious or tongue-in-cheek, focused on the future or firmly set in the past, it seems the odd and obscure is alive in the kitchen. Here are a collection of our favorites.
The Dracula Cookbook: Authentic Recipes from the Homeland of Count Dracula
I’m attaching a recipe book that I own; I feel it is fairly unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever made anything in it, although I have owned it since the late 1970s. I was a Dracula aficionado for many years. —Sandra Lent, Weymouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
Festive Food Decoration for All Occasions
Can one call this a cookbook? Although the book jacket states, “Even if you can’t cook, this book will tempt you,” many pages make me gag. Check out “Goldfish Swallowing” for one. Yet something about it is compelling, even haunting. My friend found this at a thrift store probably in 2005, and ever since, it has been a treasured possession. I’d be remiss not to mention that there are several racist “recipes.” —Amanda Rybin Koob, Lafayette, Colorado
Liberace Cooks!
I am an unusual cookbook collector! It all started with a book I received called To the King’s Taste, which got me interested in learning more about strange cookbooks. About ten years ago, I visited the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas and found out that Liberace had his own cookbook, filled with his favorite recipes. I bought the book as a gift for a friend. But afterwards I wasn’t able to find a copy of the book again. Recently, my friend got me the original Liberace Cooks! cookbook that was actually signed by Liberace in 1971. It’s so fun! —MJ Dunne
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