Ellen here, thrilled to welcome Emily Heil to Chicks. Emily is the national food reporter for the Washington Post. Her article “In old cookbooks, I’ve found magic and inspiration far beyond the recipes” popped up in my feed one day and vintage cookbook afficionado that I am, I loved it. When I learned her debut novel, A Pinch of Magic, just launched, I immediately asked her to guest with us. Take it away, Emily!
A Recipe for Mystery
Have you ever picked up an old cookbook at a thrift store or a yard sale? Or maybe you’ve inherited one from a beloved mother or grandmother.
Between its covers, you are almost certain to find a story more interesting than how to make pot roast or a chess pie. In some ways, each one contains a mystery. You might know who owned it, but you might not. It’s fun to imagine these women. Where did they live? What were they thinking as they sifted and stirred and flambeed?
Their books offer clues: Splatters and stained pages can tell you which dishes its previous owner liked best. Notes in the margins or inscriptions on the back of the cover hint at meals made and gifts given. And you might even find other bits tucked inside – handwritten recipes, maybe, or a shopping list or a birthday card whose faded script offers an intimate snapshot of someone’s life.
Old cookbooks have always fascinated me, and they were a big inspiration for my debut novel, A Pinch of Magic, which came out last month. The story centers on a withdrawn cookbook ghostwriter who gets a lesson in living life to its fullest from a ghost she accidentally summons from an old, handwritten cookbook she discovers at a jumble sale.
The idea of a spirit inhabiting a cookbook doesn’t seem all that outlandish to me. After all, aren’t we in some ways communing with the dead when we decipher the meaning of all the marks left by the women whose hands turned its pages before us?
I’m lucky enough to own my late mother’s battered edition of The Joy of Cooking. Its spine is held together by two different kinds of tape, and its pages bear the traces of a lifetime of cooking for me and my family. I feel closer to her when I cook from it, making my father’s favorite almond-topped meringue cake or the glazed ham that always took center stage at our holiday table.
I love just having it on the shelf next to my own copy of Joy, the 1997 version she gave me when I was setting up a kitchen of my own after college. I feel as if she is right there next to me, ready to offer wisdom or to tell me another story.
Maybe that’s why I find old cookbooks so irresistible. You never know what you might discover between their pages. A forgotten recipe, a glimpse into someone else’s life – or even a ghost with something left to say.
What’s the oldest cookbook on your shelf? What does it tell you about its previous owner?
ABOUT THE BOOK: A cookbook ghostwriter accidentally summons a spirit and must help with her unfinished business in this charming and cozy paranormal novel―full of small-town charm and a delightful cast of characters!
Cam Parker likes being invisible. As a cookbook ghostwriter, she lives a quiet, orderly life well behind the scenes. But when a storm smashes into her beloved grandmother’s house, she’ll do anything to pay for the repairs, even taking on a nightmare celebrity client and returning from Brooklyn to her coastal-Virginia hometown of Silver Cove and all its small-town drama.
Before she can say boo, Cam’s predictable world collapses like an underbaked souffle. For starters, she’s developing inconvenient feelings for carpenter Ian McCabe, who’s equal parts charm and complication. And then there’s the actual ghost Cam accidentally summons from an old cookbook, who apparently needs her help to right a century-old wrong. Cam can barely keep all these plates in the air. But the chaos just might push her to question her cautious approach to life―and finally write her own recipe for happiness.
ABOUT EMILY: Emily Heil, the national food reporter for The Washington Post, has been a professional journalist since she got her first writing gig at her small hometown newspaper at the age of sixteen. She lives on Capitol Hill with her fellow-journalist husband and two cats and spends as much time as possible at her childhood home on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Emily, what a wonderful, fun post! Thank you so much for visiting with us. Congratulations on A Pinch of Magic! It sounds fabulous. I’m excited to read it. I have a few cookbooks on my shelf, but I have to admit my favorite things are the handwritten recipes from friends and family that I keep in a manila folder. Those are fun for me.
Thanks, Patricia! I hope you enjoy my book. I love old hand-written recipe cards, too. I love the cards themselves, which often had a place to write who the recipe came from. What a gem you have in that folder!
So love the cards too–have some in my grandmother’s and mother’s handwriting that I cherish (they actually inspired a moment in a short story once).
I have a shelf full of cookbooks, but the one that while not the oldest is probably most treasured is one by a dear friend. She created it for her family and friends, gathering all of her family recipes as well as some other favorites. Scattered with stories and pictures, full of tips and variations, she had it professionally bound in a three ring binder style, so imminently practical and much used by me.
What a lovely idea, and a great keepsake!
That’s such a great idea — it sounds like a wonderful keepsake.
Wow, Marcia! How wonderful!
Thanks for being here, Emily! I can totally believe a ghost being summoned from a cookbook. My oldest cookbooks are either the clothbound ones my aunt passed down to me or this community cookbook that was given to me by a kind old lady.
I am intrigued by the kind old lady who gave you a cookbook! Sounds like a story there. 🙂
Emily, thank you SO much for guesting with us!
As you know, I collect vintage cookbooks myself. I think my favorite would be my Photoplay Cook Book (sic) of the Stars from 1928. I love it because 1928 was such a pivotal time in the film industry. It was when talkies came to be, so the cookbook has recipes from silent stars and those who made the transition. (I’m sure all the recipes were provided by MGM publicists, but still!)
How fascinating. That was the early days of modern celebrity culture, and now we have cookbooks from Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dogg!
What a treasure of a cookbook, El!
Ellen, that’s so cool!
That’s amazing, El. Someday will you take pictures and show us?
When we were in lockdown, I suggested that a friend who was a wonderful cook keep himself busy by writing his favorite recipes down for his children and said I would be happy to help him put it together. He and his wife cooked everyday and photographed the results. When he sent me his work, the pamphlet I had expected to edit had become a 250-page book. He is gone now, but I hear his lovely deep voice with a hint of the south in the stories he wrote about food. It is a treasure. And has some great recipes.
How sweet, Mary. I’m so glad you urged your friend to put together a beautiful cookbook.
So sweet! That’s a great project for an older person (especially in those lockdown days) and a meaningful legacy to leave with family and friends. Love these stories!
What a keepsake! Very nice of you to help.
What fun I have went through 3 copies of the Pillsbury Cookbook my favorite cookbook. I have found something added to the recipe in the notes. Deborah deborahortega229@yahoo.com
I have my mom’s 1950 edition of “The Joy of Cooking,” which I treasure (as well as the 1974 version she gifted me when I went off to college). But my most treasured cookery writings are the wooden index card boxes full of my grandmother’s recipes from the 1910s and ’20s: cookies, cakes, casseroles, all neatly typed with her scrawled notes (along with butter stains) in the margins.
Thanks so much for visiting the Chicks today, Emily, and congrats on the new book–it looks fabulous! Cheers!
Oh, Leslie, I love that!
Thank you! I love a stained recipe card or cookbook page — it’s the sign that it was well-loved.
Absolutely!
Congrats on your debut! Sounds fun.
Thank you!
What a wonderful post! My oldest cookbook is the White House Cookbook from the late 1800s. It’s barely hanging on after all these years and what I’m sure was lots of love and use. I found it in my aunt’s house when I was cleaning out her things. No idea whose it was or where it came from but now I’m pretty sure if I opened it, I would have a ghost come out and answer all my questions. 😄
Haha, you should give it a try — maybe your ghost knows some winning lottery numbers!
Marla, I am SO jealous!!
The late 1800s? Wow!
That is an interesting perception. The oldest cookbook is my mom’s recipes in a small notebook. I gave away all my cookbooks and rely on simple recipes or keto online for my husband’s health and mine but I do love my mom’s recipes as they are good ones. She won a couple of awards for her baked goods when I was a teenager, so many years ago in NY State.
There’s nothing like a family collection of recipes.
My mom left me with some great recipes. I am thinking of learning how to publish them myself online.
Welcome, Emily! So happy that you are visiting us. And huge congratulations on your novel–can’t wait to read it!
The oldest cookbook on my shelf is a family cookbook (every page is individually typed!) dated 1972. Inside, you will find a dedication that says it was compiled from “old recipes, old memories, member contributions, and everything that Aunt Irene ever knew about cooking.” It includes recipes for all courses, with lovely names like “Scoldatelli (Tarrali with seeds)” and “Panni Cotto (Bread and vegetables)” as well as full menus for holiday meals, a wonderful drawing of the authors, and a delightful poem by a 9-year-old writer.
I love this story, Emily. How delightful you incorporated your love of old cookbooks into your own book – and a ghost fits right in.
I also have my mother’s JOY, equally tattered, marked up, and much loved, as well as her recipe box. I managed to raise two sons, now 40 and 37, who also love to cook, and I’ll pass those treasures along to them when the time comes.
Also, we’d love for you to pop by the Mystery Lovers Kitchen blog, where Leslie Karst and I are members. The twelve authors share an original recipe each day, host guests (including most of the bloggers here at the Chicks), and have group chats about food once a month! https://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/