20 books like The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy

By Hannah Glasse,

Here are 20 books that The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy fans have personally recommended if you like The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Oxford Companion to Food

Jenny Linford Author Of The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour

From my list on that help us explore the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a food writer who has long been interested in seeing food in its cultural, historical, and social context. Food is too often put in a neat little box, whereas actually it offers a fascinating prism through which to explore the world. Researching and writing The Missing Ingredient – in which I explore the role of time as the universal, invisible ‘ingredient’ in the food we grow, make, and cook brought this home to me.

Jenny's book list on that help us explore the world

Jenny Linford Why did Jenny love this book?

With entries on foods from Aardvark to Zucchini, this wonderful, wide-ranging reference book has a place of honour by my desk. The idea of a global guide to foodstuffs was conceived of by Alan Davidson in 1976 – before the digital age – and first published in 1999. Davidson, who edited it, brought his intellectual curiosity, knowledge, and humour to the project. The result is a seminal reference book which instead of being dull or stodgy is lively, engaging, and interesting. A book that I never tire of using, as always come across something that catches my attention in the most beguiling way.

By Alan Davidson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Oxford Companion to Food as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

the best food reference work ever to appear in the English language ... read it and be dazzled'
Bee Wilson, New Statesman

First published in 1999, the ground-breaking Oxford Companion to Food was an immediate success and won prizes and accolades around the world. Its blend of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity, was and remains unique.

Interest in food, cooking, and the culture surrounding food has grown enormously in the intervening period, as has the study of food and food history. University departments, international societies, and academic journals have sprung up dedicated to exploring the meaning of…


Book cover of On Food and Cooking

Alex Maltman Author Of Vineyards, Rocks, and Soils: The Wine Lover's Guide to Geology

From my list on food and drink that will nourish your mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

It’s now fifty years or so since I started growing my own fruit and vegetables so as to have the freshest, best quality ingredients for my home cooking and making my own wine and beer. But I was always asking myself why things were done in a certain way: what was the science behind what was going on? I’ve always loved science for its own sake, but I believe such knowledge enhances appreciation. That’s why, when today’s new interest in vineyard geology took off, I put together my own book on that subject, and it’s why I’m enlightened by the books I list here.

Alex's book list on food and drink that will nourish your mind

Alex Maltman Why did Alex love this book?

Twenty years old and still the Bible for me. It’s all here. I used to wonder why we did things in the kitchen in a certain way, but now I know. The author doesn’t flinch from the hard science and, besides explaining so many things, that enables him to explode a number of common kitchen myths (searing meat doesn’t seal in the juices) and provide lots of practical advice for the home kitchen.

Other supposedly food and science books have come and gone, but McGee remains my go-to source.

By Harold McGee,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked On Food and Cooking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An updated twentieth-anniversary edition of the classic culinary reference features ninety percent new material and provides a wealth of kitchen tips, food-preparation techniques, folklore, literary anecdotes, and health information, in a volume that features particular coverage of trends from the p


Book cover of Much Depends on Dinner

Jenny Linford Author Of The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour

From my list on that help us explore the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a food writer who has long been interested in seeing food in its cultural, historical, and social context. Food is too often put in a neat little box, whereas actually it offers a fascinating prism through which to explore the world. Researching and writing The Missing Ingredient – in which I explore the role of time as the universal, invisible ‘ingredient’ in the food we grow, make, and cook brought this home to me.

Jenny's book list on that help us explore the world

Jenny Linford Why did Jenny love this book?

This wonderful, engaging book will change the way you think about food. Margaret Visser unpicks an “ordinary meal” in North America, digging beneath the surface of everyday ingredients such as butter, lettuce and chicken to reveal fascinating stories. Visser – who writes with a shrewd and perceptive intelligence - weaves together history, science and social observation to great effect. The ‘ordinary’ meal proves to be no such thing.

By Margaret Visser,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Much Depends on Dinner as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An excursion into the origins and background of an ordinary dinner: corn on the cob, chicken with rice, lettuce salad and ice-cream. Tracing the historical, cultural, agricultural and social strands that run through their history, the author presents the reader with an "anthropology of everyday life". This book was the winner of the 1990 Glenfiddich Award for the Food Book of the Year. The author also wrote "The Rituals of Dinner".


Book cover of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives

Jenny Linford Author Of The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour

From my list on that help us explore the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a food writer who has long been interested in seeing food in its cultural, historical, and social context. Food is too often put in a neat little box, whereas actually it offers a fascinating prism through which to explore the world. Researching and writing The Missing Ingredient – in which I explore the role of time as the universal, invisible ‘ingredient’ in the food we grow, make, and cook brought this home to me.

Jenny's book list on that help us explore the world

Jenny Linford Why did Jenny love this book?

Such an important, relevant, and well-written book. Carolyn Steel traces the journey food takes to feed our cities – from the land where it is grown to the waste dumps, where its decay causes environmental degradation. It is a book that looks forward as well as to the past. Hungry City ends with a rallying cry to create a better food system – better for us, for society, for the planet. ‘How food shapes our lives in our future is up to us,’ writes Steel.

By Carolyn Steel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hungry City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

*According to the Trussell Trust, food bank use between April and Sept 2018 was up 13% on the same period in 2017.*

*Every year in the UK 18 million tonnes of food end up in landfill.*

Why is this the case and what can we do about it?

The relationship between food and cities is fundamental to our everyday lives. Food shapes cities and through them it moulds us - along with the countryside that feeds us. Yet few of us are conscious of the process and we rarely stop to wonder how food reaches our plates.

Hungry City examines…


Book cover of The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook

Gina Meyers Author Of From Muggles to Magic: The Complete Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook

From my list on cookbooks for kids and parents.

Why am I passionate about this?

Gina Meyers is well known for her popular culture television trivia and cooking expertise books related to Harry Potter, Twilight, and the iconic television show Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Gina's Love At First Bite, The Unofficial Twilight Cookbook was featured on the NBC hit show, The Office. Gina's goal is to reignite the spark of imagination and creativity in the kitchen, introducing youth, teens, and fans of magical sitcoms to the culinary arts.

Gina's book list on cookbooks for kids and parents

Gina Meyers Why did Gina love this book?

With this cookbook, dining a la Hogwarts is as easy as delicious. If you are looking for a unique themed cookbook and want a lot of British-inspired recipes, look no further. With more than 150 easy-to-make recipes, tips, and techniques, you can indulge in spellbinding meals drawn straight from the pages of your favorite Potter stories.

By Dinah Bucholz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Synopsis coming soon.......


Book cover of The Unofficial Hogwarts For The Holidays Cookbook: Pumpkin Pasties, Treacle Tart, and Many More Spellbinding Treats

Bridget Thoreson Author Of The Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cookbook For Kids: 50 Fun and Easy Recipes for Tricks, Treats, and Spooky Eats Inspired by the Halloween Classic

From my list on pop culture cookbooks for fans of just about anything.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer based in Brooklyn, NY. My books include The Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cookbook, XOXO: A Cocktail Book, and consulting for Are You My Wine? Clearly, I am very interested in drinking, eating, and pop culture. When we started talking about a follow-up project for The Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cookbook, my mind first went to my daughter Beatrice. I was excited for the day when she could watch the movie with me and share a part of my own life as a kid. I knew that many other millennial parents probably felt the same way, and so I knew I wanted to do a book that would enhance that experience. 

Bridget's book list on pop culture cookbooks for fans of just about anything

Bridget Thoreson Why did Bridget love this book?

Food might not be the first thing you think of when you think about the Harry Potter series, and it really doesn’t star that much in the films. But if you read the books, every school year starts out with a detailed description of the start of term feast, and throughout the year, every holiday and celebration is marked by another feast chock-full of pumpkin juice, treacle tart, puddings, bouillabaisse, and more.

This cookbook shows you how to make all of the wizarding world’s favorite dishes, and it is perfect if you love the books or films. It is a great way to relive and celebrate your favorite moments of these incredible stories.

By Rita Mock Pike,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Unofficial Hogwarts For The Holidays Cookbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Make every day a spell-tacular celebration with the cookbook mugglenet.com calls "beautiful, well-laid out, and easy to read" andfeatures "a large variety of recipes – something for every event".

What better way to celebrate than by whipping up a magically delicious meal in your kitchen? From sumptuous fall and winter feasts to delectable desserts and tea-time treats, this book has all of your holidays and special occasions covered, with an extra magical twist. Celebrate in true wizard style with recipes like:

- Pumpkin Pasties
- Cauldron Cakes
- Roast Beef
- Yorkshire Pudding
- Chocolate Gateau
- Bath Buns
-…


Book cover of Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger

William Lee Adams Author Of Wild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision

From my list on surviving dysfunctional families.

Why am I passionate about this?

I sometimes joke that the greatest gift my parents gave me was a troubled childhood. Difficult circumstances taught me about patience and gave me the grit to persevere. My mother’s mood swings and my brother’s violent outbursts turned me into a shrewd observer of people and their unpredictable behavior. That led me to study psychology at Harvard, where so much research seemed to boil down to one goal: giving people context to understand why they act and behave in particular ways. As a journalist who has interviewed thousands of people across dozens of countries, the theme of family – and how we sometimes have to overcome them – remains as salient as ever.

William's book list on surviving dysfunctional families

William Lee Adams Why did William love this book?

Nigel Slater was already one of the U.K.’s most celebrated chefs when he released his memoir Toast in 2003.

When I read it more than a decade later, it was like diving into a prequel to his many cookbooks, columns, and TV shows that I’d followed for years. The book is hilarious and heartbreaking. It beautifully illustrates how interests and passions can save people from unhappy childhoods and toxic people, like his coarse stepmother and distant father, both of whom are vividly drawn.

As a memoirist, I took inspiration from his narrative arch and how he persevered. The darkness and isolation of my own childhood is what prepared me to embrace the glitz and glamour of Eurovision. 

By Nigel Slater,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Toast as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

TOAST is top food writer Nigel Slater's eat-and-tell autobiography. Detailing all the food, recipes and cooking that have marked his passage from greedy schoolboy to great food writer. In December 2010 the BBC will bring out a film of Toast starring Helena Bonham-Carter and directed by Lee Hall, who won an oscar nomination for Billy Elliot.

Britain's most popular cook describes his personal culinary odyssey, from dangerous encounters with his mother's weevil-seasoned cakes to being harangued by readers who think he deliberately styles Yorkshire puddings to look like a woman's private parts.

Hilarious, irreverent and mouthwatering, TOAST captures thirty years…


Book cover of Food In England: A complete guide to the food that makes us who we are

Elisabeth Luard Author Of European Peasant Cookery

From my list on cookbooks published at moments of change.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a home cook, not a restaurant chef. I add a pinch of this and splash of that. As a chronicler of other people's culinary habits, I need to understand why we cook the way we do. At its simplest and most basic, what goes into the ancestral cooking-pot depends on who we are, where we live, and where we come from. Which is why whenever we want to remind ourselves who we are, we look for traditional recipes in culinary bibles produced at moments of change. I was born at a moment of change myself, in bombed-out London in 1941, at the height of the Blitz.  

Elisabeth's book list on cookbooks published at moments of change

Elisabeth Luard Why did Elisabeth love this book?

A first-person account of the culinary habit of rural Britain gathered in the aftermath of WW1, Ms. Hartley set out to collect rural recipes at time when the countryside had been emptied of their young men, leaving young women without hope of a husband. 

Resourceful and independent, Dorothy travelled the length and breadth of her native land, sleeping under hedgerows, huddling round peat-fires, always with pen-and-ink and paper in hand, notebook at the ready. The finished manuscript complete with evocative illustrations didn't see the light of day until ten years after the end of WW2.

I well remember post-war rationing and terrible school catering in the 1950s, source of the nation's reputation for inedible food. Ms. Harley's recipes prove the reverse (particularly the baking). 

By Dorothy Hartley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Food In England as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

FOOD IN ENGLAND became an instant classic when it was first published in 1954, and its eclectic mix of recipes, anecdotes, household hints, spells and history has had a deep influence on countless English cooks and food writers since.

With wit and wisdom, Dorothy Hartley explores the infinite variety of English cooking, as well as many aspects of English life and culture. From the rules of conduct for a medieval banquet to the way to make perfect mashed potatoes, from how to dress a crab to the ultimate recipe for strawberries and cream, FOOD IN ENGLAND will delight all admirers…


Book cover of Martha Lloyd's Household Book: The Original Manuscript from Jane Austen's Kitchen

Roy Adkins Author Of Eavesdropping on Jane Austen’s England: How Our Ancestors Lived Two Centuries Ago

From my list on Jane Austen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was brought up in Maidenhead in Berkshire, a town on the River Thames to the west of London. After studying archaeology at University College, Cardiff, I worked for many years as a field archaeologist. I met my wife, Lesley, on an excavation at Milton Keynes, and we have worked together ever since, both in archaeology and as authors of archaeology and history books. It was only after studying the Napoleonic period, which was when Jane Austen lived and wrote, that I understood the context of her novels and came to a much deeper appreciation of them.

Roy's book list on Jane Austen

Roy Adkins Why did Roy love this book?

Martha Lloyd was a close friend of Jane Austen and a relative by marriage. She lived with the Austen family at Chawton in Hampshire when Jane was there with her mother and sister, and much later Martha married Jane’s widowed brother, Francis. Her household book shows us the recipes and homemade medical remedies that they used at that time. This book has a facsimile of the original manuscript, along with various notes, as well as a section on Martha Lloyd that is the best available summary of her life.

By Julienne Gehrer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Martha Lloyd's Household Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the first facsimile publication of 'Martha Lloyd's Household Book', the manuscript cookbook of Jane Austen's closest friend. Martha's notebook is reproduced in a colour facsimile section with complete transcription and detailed annotation. Introductory chapters discuss its place among other household books of the eighteenth century.

Martha Lloyd befriended a young Jane Austen and later lived with Jane, her sister Cassandra and their mother at the cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane wrote or revised her novels. Martha later married into the Austen family. Her collection features recipes and remedies handwritten during a period of over thirty years and…


Book cover of Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking

Lizzie Collingham Author Of The Hungry Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

From my list on food and history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I first became interested in food when I was researching my PhD on the use of the body as an instrument of rule in British India. The British in India developed a language of food to demonstrate their power and status. I discovered that food is a rich subject for the historian as it carries a multitude of stories. I have since written five more books exploring these complex stories, always interested in connecting the broad sweep of historical processes to the more intimate level of everyday life and the connections between the food world of the past with the food world of the present.

Lizzie's book list on food and history

Lizzie Collingham Why did Lizzie love this book?

In among the diaries and photographs, medal collections, old-fashioned games and mother of pearl counters that Hilary Spurling helped her husband clear from a great-aunt’s London house in the 1970s, she found the seventeenth-century, leather-bound manuscript cookbook of Lady Elinor Fettiplace. Lady Elinor lived with her husband in Appleton manor a few miles south-west of Oxford from 1589 until her death in 1647. The book is one of very few manuscript cookbooks to have survived from this time and from the marginal annotations noting timings and quantities, as well as extra ingredients, it is clear that Lady Elinor used it as a working cookbook. Spurling decided to do the same and followed Lady Elinor ‘round the calendar’ making her ‘Oringe Marmalad’ in January, pickling ‘cowcumbers’ in July, and preparing mutton and rosewater mince pies in December. Through Spurling’s cooking adventures we are transported into the familiar yet strange, rose-water flavoured…

By Hilary Spurling,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Brilliantly compiled and presented by the celebrated biographer, Hilary Spurling, Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book has become a classic in the history of English cooking, and an extraordinarily intimate glimpse into the fabric of everyday Elizabethan life.

'Hilary Spurling has done brilliantly ... Being both a scholar and a cook seems to be a rare combination than one might have expected.' Jane Grigson

'Few cookery books are as important or as fascinating as this ... (Hilary Spurling's) scholarly and practical skills combined make the book much more than an antiquarian curiosity. It is a cookery book to use.' Victoria Glendinning, The…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Hogwarts, pop culture, and potatoes?

Hogwarts 10 books
Pop Culture 165 books
Potatoes 20 books