One of my favorite books is African Cooking, written by Laurens Van Der Post for Time Life, as part of a series of 27 book sets. Each set is a pair, one focused on a coffee table book full of cultural photos and context, and the second is a booklet of recipes. These books documented culture and cuisine across the world from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Once Upon a Feast describes them as “well-written travelogues with rich descriptions of the various customs, the history of the different regions and always the focus on food. Each volume has a glorious photo of food from that particular culture on the cover and many more inside that bring to life the local customs. Just remember that it was written in the '70's and so some of the names have changed, but the food remains constant.”
I put together this compilation for a project and I’m excited to look through the books and explore the historic recipes. Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can find copies of most of the books, and I’ve compiled them here for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
Summary
Publisher - Time Life Inc
Authors - majority of the authors are white/ western/ American including Craig Claiborne, and MFK Fisher.
Content - historical exploration, cultural context, and recipes
A list of all the books in the series
A Quintet of Cuisines by Michael Field
African Cooking by Laurens Van der Post
American Cooking by Dale Brown
American Cooking: Creole and Acadian by Peter S. Feibleman
American Cooking: New England by Jonathan Norton Leonard
American Cooking: Southern Style by Eugene Walter
American Cooking: The Eastern Heartland by José Wilson
American Cooking: The Great West by Jonathan Norton Leonard
American Cooking: The Melting Pot by James Patrick Shenton
American cooking: the Northwest by Dale Brown
Classic French Cooking by Craig Claiborne
Middle Eastern Cooking by Harry G. Nickles
Pacific and Southeast Asian Cooking by Rafael Steinberg
Russian Cooking by Helen Waite Papashvily
The Cooking of China by Emily Hahn
The Cooking of Germany by Nika Standen Hazelton
The Cooking of India by Santha Rama Rau
The cooking of Italy by Waverley Root
The Cooking of Japan by Rafael Steinberg
The Cooking of Latin America by Jonathan Norton Leonard
The Cooking of Provincial France by M. F. K. Fisher
The Cooking of Scandinavia by Dale Brown
The Cooking of Spain and Portugal by Peter S. Feibleman
The Cooking of the British Isles by Adrian Bailey
The Cooking of the Caribbean Islands by Linda Wolfe
The Cooking of Vienna's Empire by Joseph Wechsberg
Wines and Spirits by Alec Waugh