The Best Books of 2023 on the History and People Behind How We Eat

These books take a deep look at our food systems and why we eat and cook the way that we do.

The traditional cookbook lays out a profusion of recipes for the reader to make in their own home, the author acting as a guide on how to make a particular dish. It’s a great way to share new cooking methods, but a book more focused on food instead of recipes can teach us even more. A new crop of books is showing that food can not only be a way to look at the world but also provide a platform to examine the way we as a society eat — and what we choose to eat. Often deeply personal and well-researched, these books offer a more in-depth look at different parts of the food world and how they engage with one another to create the food systems that determine what we eat, cook and how we dine.

Here are a few of the best from this year, that show that food is much more than what is on our plates:

The Secrets of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen

“The hard part of cooking is almost never the cooking itself (which is one of many reasons why being a home cook is so far removed from being a chef),” writes British food writer Bee Wilson in her seventh book. “The truth is, the hard part is all the other stuff that has to happen before you can find your way to the stove ready and able to cook.” In her latest work, Wilson walks readers through the actual magic that can happen in a kitchen when a cook dials into their unique set of circumstances (access to ingredients, tools and even their mood) to show that the home kitchen can be a more comfortable and creative place. Wilson advises that it’s OK to cut corners, it’s OK to have preferences and, most importantly, it’s OK to make mistakes because all of that makes you a better cook. Though there are recipes like “soup for frayed nerves,” the whole is more manifesto than cookbook, a guide on how to use your kitchen in a way that is generous, malleable and fun.

Endangered Eating: America's Vanishing Foods

We’ve all heard of endangered animals but what about ingredients? In this book, food historian Sarah Loman tells the stories of “endangered edibles” that are part of the Ark of Taste, a list created by Slow Food USA to highlight distinctive ingredients that are in danger of becoming extinct. She traces their background through the people and places that impact them to learn why they are fading away. Through eight first-person essays, Loman tracks down the farms, restaurants, growers, and fisherman that are part of the life cycle of ingredients like heirloom cider apples from the Hudson Valley, dates from California's Coachella Valley, and even Navajo Churro sheep in the southwestern United States. In doing so, she illuminates how the delicate balance of agriculture, demand and production impact what is available and how we can protect heritage ingredients from being lost forever.

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of China’s Food

What Fuchsia Dunlop describes as a “small and impulsive” decision in 1994 to go to college in Sichuan, China, has led to her life as a scholar of Chinese cooking. In her latest book, Dunlop covers the history of Chinese cooking, a comically large history of ingredients, techniques and regional variations to cover in one volume. “This book attempts to ask what is Chinese food, how should we understand it and just as importantly how should we eat it,” she writes.  For Dunlop, the banquet in question is not only the sensory aspects of Chinese dishes that she covers in detail, describing the cooking techniques, ingredients, smells, sounds and tastes, but also the conversations that this cuisine can inspire. “Chinese gastronomic culture offers discussions about health and environmental issues and eating in harmony with nature,” she continues. In that way, Dunlop has once again shown her work as an ambassador of Chinese cooking, looking to explore it in a way that showcases the people and dishes that have intrigued her since she moved to China, and in turn encourage readers to explore the cuisine as well.

Midwestern Food: A Chef's Guide to the Surprising History of a Great American Cuisine

What originally started as a memoir about how his family of German immigrants settled in southern Indiana before settling on farmland that would go on to feed “five generations of their descendants,” chef, historian, and author Paul Fehribach instead gives a bird’s eye view of the cooking and diversity of the region. The Midwest, as Fehribach describes it, stretches from parts of western Pennsylvania and the Finger Lakes to the Great Plains states like Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. It’s where you can find everything from sauerkraut laced with bacon grease to Kansas City-style barbecued beef brisket and surprises like cranberry and bone marrow pudding pie (highlighting cranberries, a native fruit of the region). Fehribach, the chef and owner of Chicago’s Big Jones, writes with the intention of showing the patchwork quilt of Midwestern American cooking that reflects how immigration has shifted iconic dishes and cuisine. He notes, “A generation from now, a book like this may have many new recipes, and some will have been relegated to history.” Deeply researched and including recipes and profiles of people who call the Midwest home, this book reads like a scholarly text and a call for the food world to recognize the Midwest as a powerhouse culinary region.

No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating

In her debut book, San Juan, Puerto Rico-based writer, cultural critic, and former pastry chef Alicia Kennedy explores the oft-maligned world of plant-based eating and all of the assumptions that come along with that title or the word “vegan.” But while many people see plant-based eating or vegan diets as new or trendy, Kennedy’s No Meat Required expertly lays out how enduring plant-based eating is in America and other parts of the world. She also shares how intensely pleasurable and fascinating this world can be for diners and readers. In this well-researched and thought-provoking book, Kennedy examines how plant-based products have become mainstream, the history of vegetarian and vegan cooking in the 60’s and 70’s and how money, land access, and human rights issues impact it as well.

The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food

In the height of the pandemic, author and podcast host Andrew Friedman set out to, as he says, “really understand precisely how much work, creativity, and collaboration were represented on even just one plate.” The result is this book, which uses a single dish as a jumping off point and looks at the network of chefs, prep cooks, suppliers, farmers and more that make going out to eat possible. Friedman starts with Johnny Clark and Beverly Kim at their (now-shuttered) Chicago restaurant, Wherewithall, where he meets the dish that will be the center of the book, a dry-aged strip loin with tomato and pickled sorrel leaves that is served as part of the restaurant’s tasting menu. He spends time talking with and observing each employee at the restaurant, from the chef de cuisine to the servers and dishwashers. Then he expands his web to trail the farm delivery driver, go into the slaughterhouse with the cattle rancher, and interview workers at the Michigan vineyard where the wine for the sauce was produced. The result is a 360-degree look at the people and effort that goes into a single dish that offers diners a detailed look at the life cycle of restaurants.

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