Cookbooks as Entertainment

Something Changed

MOST COOKBOOKS USED TO be all about teaching. Fanny Farmer, after all, ran the Boston Cooking School. Julia Child’s intent, as much that of The Good Housekeeping Cookbook, was to teach housewives (and others) to be better cooks. In the US, the genre — the teaching cookbook — reached a height of care and intelligence from the 70s through perhaps the 90s,…