Turkish delights: the best of the year’s cookbooks
From our UK edition
‘Recipes are like magic potions. They promise transformations,’ says Bee Wilson in her introduction to Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake (Faber, £12.99), a collection of classic authors’ recipes. You have to pray that tinned tomato soup will indeed be transformed into something nice-tasting, or that Noel Streatfeild’s filets de boeuf aux bananas will not be as revolting as it sounds. Not much hope of that, I’m afraid – but this is more of a book to enjoy reading without tasting. Some of the writers confess to failing miserably in the food department. ‘I am a very bad cooker, as the children put it,’ warns Beryl Bainbridge, as she launches into a heartless recipe for violently boiled mince.
