I don't know what I was expecting when I requested this title but it was quite fun to dive into. I am an avid home cook and always work off of a recipe, though I do embellish towards my own tastes. Bloom presents a compact and curious exploration of the life and legacy of recipes. It is a fascinating topic because many recipes are similar to each other and others are singular in their complexity. Bloom explores the ins-and-outs of what makes a recipe a recipe. If you are a fan of food make sure to pick up this bite size read and enjoy!

Another great entry in the Object Lessons series. While most books in this series have been interesting reads, this is the first one that, for me, literally nailed the brief of "showing the hidden side of ordinary things".

I don't enjoy cooking. Comfort baking and Procrastibaking are not tasks that bring me joy and if I could Marie Konde cooking out of my life without having to survive on high salt and sugary take- away, I would.

Quick easy meals, One-pot meals, tray bakes, cauldrons of vegetable soup that last 3 days, and cereal for dinner - these are all my go-tos. Even on the rare occasion when I need to make something slightly fancier than these staples, I rarely follow a recipe step-by-step. I tend to view recipes as "suggested guidelines" instead of "explicit instructions" and am very much a don't-have-that-ingredient-so-use-this-instead, that-tastes-about-right and I-think-its-been-in-there-long-enough slapdash kind of cook. Thinking about recipes is not something I dedicate brain power or energy to at all, so this book was a curiosity to me.

Instinctually we all probably know deep down in the lizard part of our brain there are very strong ties between food and cooking (and therefore recipes), and human sociability and community, taking this trip down memory lane was an eye-opening and fascinating read.

Bloom did a great job of spotlighting the food and humans orbit via her analysis of recipes as stories passed down through generations, food science, food bloggers, food security, as well as the darker side of food origins like chocolate. Plus, who could resist the temptation of a whole chapter dedicated to Mac-And-Cheese... hmmm... cheesy goodness. It was a great rainy day read and definitely one that will stir up memories of family and food, and give you warm fuzzy feelings. Or maybe that was just hunger pangs.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the reading copy.

This was a super fun cookbook. Cookbooks are a dime a dozen but this is an eye catching cover and the book definitely follows through on what it offers. Love!

Recipe was a surprising book. Not at all what I expected but everything that I didn't know I needed.
Filled with lessons I wasn't sure I was ready to read, a critical analysis by any standard.

I since found it was part of a larger series and have sourced out a few of the other titles to find they are similar in delivery.

Was I hoping for an actual recipe book? Yes. Did I get that? No. Am I sad about it? I don't think so.

I was gifted a digital copy of Recipe by the publishers in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I love this Object Lessons series so was happy to include this title in “The Best Books to Gift This Holiday,” the big holiday gift books package in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper (Nov 19 print edition, also online).

This book was not what I was expecting. It is an interesting topic but not what I was looking for. If you are looking for the history and background on recipes and how they started, etc. this book is for you. It is academic focused so if you are in need of research sources, this will be helpful.

Another interesting and thought-provoking volume in the wonderful Object Lessons series, this time about recipes, and about food in general, a somewhat meandering and personal wander through recipes and cookbooks, but with not too much actual memoir which is a good thing. (Some of these Object Lessons are really too self-indulgent). I’d never given any thought before to what a recipe actually is and now I have, thanks to this wide-ranging and eclectic exploration of the subject.

So neat! This book breaks down what a recipe really is. Point by point in a funny, interesting way. I enjoy this very much.

Great reference for people who write recipes and need a base to build off of. I had no idea how many different thoughts go into creating a recipe. Super easy to follow one however, lots of credit to those who actually create them!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a great book that really breaks down for the reader what a recipe is. I enjoyed it a lot.

Very interesting book for those who regularly write recipes. Good content on the building blocks of recipe writing.

I never stopped and reflected on what "recipe" mean. This book was a surprise but it also made me think and learn something new.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This is one of a series of books on everyday items called "Object Lessons".
It’s a a great read , not what i was expecting.

I absolutely loved this - the simplicity was great and it really flowed well as a guide. Highly recommend!

I love this series. Each instalment is an "object lesson" in both the object, and the author themselves. In this case Lynn Bloom leaves off almost all personal perspective. The book itself focuses more on food than on recopies per se. For such a slim volume it covers a LOT of ground, include some heavy topics like food scarcity and child labour.
Interestingly (to me) there is no focus or discussion of gender, which could have been included.
My only criticism of this book is it is very Ameri-centric -of the 5 chapters one focuses on Thanksgiving menus. That's not surprising, given it is written by an American for an American publisher.
A strong instalment in an interesting series. I look forward to the next "object lesson".

Recipe by Lynn Z. Bloom is a super interesting dissection of what a recipe really does. This book will teach you a lot and spark recognition all throughout - it is really clever. If you are looking for an academic read that will make you think differently about food and recipe writing this is the one.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC - Recipe is out 6/30/22.

This is an eclectic book. It's not an in-depth examination into the social, cultural or culinary history of the recipe - and it doesn't want to be that. This is more whimsical, more meandering, more dip-a-toe-into-interesting-spaces than that.

It's also super American; I feel I should flag that for all the other non-US readers. There's a whole chapter on Thanksgiving - and I get why you would do that, but also there's no acknowledgement that it's restricted as "a recipe" to one country and its diaspora. And in the first chapter, about the basics of what a recipe is, the author uses the idea of chicken stock to elaborate on the idea of variation. Which makes sense! But then says this: "Every version of this basic recipe involves the same ingredients in the same proportions - the amount of chicken in the recipe is always five pounds" (12). Um. Not in my recipes? Even given that maybe she just couldn't be bothered mentioning that other countries might use different measurements, it's still a weirdly sweeping generalisation. (This one might be picked up in editing, but the author also refers to "the Great British Baking Show" which struck me a really WEIRD mistake.)

ANYWAY. Despite those things, I did enjoy reading this a lot. I love Bloom's idea that "as a literary genre and social construct, multi-faceted and complex, a recipe in its human context offers lessons in life and living" (3) - that's such a fantastic way of putting it. Throughout the book, she shows those different aspects of the idea of 'a recipe'. And also made me feel better about the fact that I often don't follow a recipe to the absolute letter (except in baking, which is chemistry) - she says this is indeed what people everywhere always do. I love the idea of recipe as story, and as memory. I'm less wild about it as a symbol of power or politics, but absolutely accept that it can be.

All up, a really great read. Also it's made me dead keen to find other books in the Object Lesson series: a book on the eye chart? on exits? THE TRENCH COAT??

First, replace your semolina with semiotics. This academic book guides us through the titular concept, in ways that might, and yet might struggle to, grab the average browser. The first chapter looks at the way a recipe book, or blogsite or utube channel, conveys the recipe format, and uses chicken soups as a way to show how technicality level and other aspects all vary even when discussing the one and the same thing. Secondly, we're looking at how recipes are the tip of the iceberg, and there's a lot of ancient stuff underneath that carried the berg out to sea – chefs looking at ways others do it, and/or their grandmothers. (I so hate recipe books when the page is wasted with the cook saying how it was a chance encounter with an Antiquistan goatherd that taught her to do this or use that – but hey, at least the grebo with multiple flesh-rings in the local street market made it more westernised and perfect for your little Johnny of a TV meal!! Nobody. Cares. Except the people that do, and they don't count.)

A chapter on comfort foods is next, and the author nearly starts to pick apart the food as opposed to the dish (that kind of thing is reserved for chocolate, later). But not for the first time there is mention of a post-recipe world, where everybody knows what things do, and so things are thrown together based on what's in the fridge still, and something new is made by us each time we cook. In sheer contrast to that is Thanksgiving, where we don't get a recipe for the food – we get a recipe for the entire day. And also in contrast to the post-recipe world is the pre-recipe idea that makes porridge (whatever porridge means to your country) – a basic so basic nobody ever needed it written down with specific measurements and cookbook writers' waffle.

All told this was perfectly reasonable, but on the slightly dry side where reading around the subject of food is concerned (not that I've done that much, at all). It does provide for a suitable monograph on something the regular reader would not have expected to see, let alone enjoy, a full volume on. But in looking at it in such academic terms – and that most successfully – it kind of missed the flippancy I might have sought from such a book. I always say that if you're going to measure something by the 'cup' you might as well start measuring books by the 'pocket', as even if it fits they're all going to be a different bleddy size. (Inconstancy in recipes is featured, to be fair.) This might not have fit perfectly with what I was expecting, whatever that was, but this was not a waste of time at all – three and a half stars. And at least it pulled back from discussing the author's gender issues and ultra-wokeishness, as all similar books in this frustrating series seem more concerned with than is good for them.

This book was a great dive into something almost every one of us has interacted with at some level - the recipe. In the process of reviewing what a recipe is, how to read it, and the cultural history of some common foods (porridge and chocolate) and holidays (thanksgiving), this book reminded me of how much I love cooking and gave me some cool ideas to try for my own experimentation with recipes. Lastly, the ending of the book was sweet and I will definitely be trying the recipe for my own.

What is a recipe? Lynn Z Bloom rattles through that one pretty quickly in her opening chapter because she knows this book isn't really about recipes. Its about food. But there would never be an Object Lesson book on Food - the scope is too big and there have already been plenty on types of food (and drink). But you can't talk about recipes without talking about food and so she positions the book in a weird hinterland between the two. She happily talks about the kinds of recipes there are - loose improvisational guidelines to test kitchen recommended precise instructions. She talks about the kind of cookbook authors there are - from home cooks with their twinkly folklore advice to high-powered TV chefs. She wisely spends quite a lot of time talking about how the internet has changed recipes, and handlily reminds us that her bibliography would be five times as long and inaccurate if she didn't trust us to google any of the recipes that seem interesting, But she really, really wants to talk about food.

I had no problem with that, and enjoyed Recipe a lot as a brief but meandering wander through food issues. The deep dive chapter on chocolate is where pretty much all pretence of being about recipes drifts away but replaces that with some of the starker economic and slavery costs of this gorgeous food. Recipes rely on plenty, food security, so what happens when you have none of that (the chapter on porridge will tell you that). In many ways the form of her book mimics what she says about recipes - an instruction manual that knows its readers will not follow to the letter. This is about recipes, but it isn't just about recipes, and isn't either the last word on recipes.

It was interesting that only when I thought about what was missing here that the book started to disappoint me (which means it will probably pass most peoples cursory enjoyment test). It is, as they often are, very US centric, which also means a broad assumption of knowledge of Julia Child, Iron Chef and no mention of Delia Smith (I would have been interested to compare the "cooking bibles" of various countries). No comparison of recipes with experiments - though their write ups are surprisingly similar. To that point no mention at all of the Anarchists Cookbook. And whilst there is some talk about the measurements involved and accuracy - no real mention of volume vs weight and the bugbear of everyone outside the USA following a US recipe - the cup measure (or indeed a stick of butter). That's all fine, Object Lessons are short and at the whim of the writer who here has decided not to go down an memoir route. My disappointment in these topics being skated is merely due to the knowledge that she would have done it really well - as everything else here is.