The Little Library Cookbook by Kate Young
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’ve been waiting for this book for a while, ever since I came across Kate Young’s work online and, in particular, the moment where she made breakfast rolls as inspired by The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. What more perfect an aim could one wish for then a cookbook inspired by literary foods?
And this, this is perfect. It is a very particular sort of perfect, one crafted by brown-butter madeleines and porridge and Rebecca and The Bear Nobody Wanted, shifting from ‘before noon’, to ‘around noon’, to ‘after noon’, ‘the dinner table’, ‘midnight feasts’, ‘parties and celebrations’ and ‘christmas’, and stopping off at My Life in France and My Naughty Little Sister on the way.
The Little Library Cookbook is a delicious and intoxicating mixture of memory and recipe, where writing nestles up against recipe (which is, to be frank, a form as elegant as any poetry you’d dare to mention), and Bad Harry sits on one page whilst on another, Young’s writing makes me want to try porridge. Porridge. I can’t stand porridge, but this book makes me want to stand it, makes me want to try it through writing as delicious as this: “Pour the oats and water into a saucepan and leave to soak while you have a shower or check your emails or snooze against the doorframe – 1o minutes will do.” Food, books, and snoozing. I am sold. I even want a spurtle.
I’m not one for cookbooks, not normally. I find them a little removed and unachieavable. Aspirational, yes, and inspiring, sometimes, but somehow never quite doable. But oh, I love The Little Library Cookbook because it’s a tribute to language and fiction and food, all at the same time, and fiction sustains us, in its way, as much as a fried egg on toast does. This is cookery for readers and Young doesn’t leave you behind. Her recipes are friendly and kind and honest; swap this for that, if you don’t have this, here’s a substitute, and her book choices are delightful.
I love work like this, and I love it when it feels like you’ve known a book for a long time even though you’ve just met. The Little Library Cookbook feels like family. It feels like home.
Daisy May Johnson 