It’s a quandry. You want to entice readers to make your recipes, but you don’t want to just hit them over the head with sales pitches.
Fortunately, there are more subtle ways to attract people to a recipe. Here are five methods cookbook authors use to draw in readers:
1. Make them salivate. Describe the food and how it’s cooked so readers can not only imaging tasting it, but they see it, smell it, hear it, even imagine touching it. Here’s a headnote for South Indian-Style Eggplant Pickle, from Cradle of Flavor by Saveur Editor-in-Chief James Oseland that gets the senses going:
“This south Indian-style pickle is popular in Malaysian kitchens, although the sugar in it is a decidedly Malaysian addition. Similar to caponata, the Sicilian eggplant relish, it’s made of chunks of Japanese eggplants in a lavishly spiced sweet-sour pickling base. Coriander, fennel, cumin, chiles, ginger, and cinnamon all vie for dominance, creating a lush layering of flavors. The eggplants are fried and then put in the pickling base, rather than cooked in it. Japanese eggplants, which are commonly used in Malaysian cuisine, cook quickly, so frying them first give you more control, ensuring that they won’t come out mushy.”
Notice his evocative description, so specific that you can almost taste the eggplant. He assumes you may not know caponata, so he describes it too. Then he tells you how to cook the dish, so you can visualize it, like a movie. Oseland finishes by reassuring you that with his technique, you’ll create a superior dish.
2. Building on that last point, give readers the confidence to make your dish. Here’s the headnote from Alice Medrich’s Molten Chocolate-Raspberry Cakes from Bittersweet:
“Have you ever ordered one of these sexy little desserts in a restaurant only to find that the anticipated molten center has morphed into a cake instead of flowing sauce? Because small desserts are more easily overbaked than large ones, and because baking ties vary with different kinds of chocolate, I’ve concluded that the bet and simples insurance against disappointment (congealed sauce) is the buried-truffle method. During the short time in the oven, the truffle in each small cake melts to form a luscious sauce, while the cake gets fully baked. Although it sounds like a completely separate step, the truffles are actually created with a portion of the cake batter, so the whole process is quite efficient.”
You sense immediately that she knows exactly what she’s talking about, that you can make this cake and it will turn out just as well as hers. And you’re drooling by now, right? You see your fork cutting into the dark cake, and the shiny middle oozing out. She’s evocative even though she’s giving you straight-forward, trusted instruction.
3. Set a scene that transports people. Take them to a place you love, and give them a vicarious thrill. Here’s part of Carol Field’s headnote for Bagna Cauda, in Celebrating Italy:
“When the air in the vine-covered hills of Piedmont was thick with the aroma of newly made wine, workers once used to gather to share a pot of bagna cauda set over heat in the middle of a table. They would dip crisp raw autumn vegetables into the steaming garlicky mixture (yes, I know) of oil, butter, and anchovies. This rustic dish is part of an authentic gastronomic tradition persisting to this day…”
It’s a simple recipe for a sauce of butter, olive oil, garlic and anchovies, but now I’m right there with the workers, sitting on a bench in the crisp air of the countryside, dipping my fennel slice into a warm bowl of garlicy goodness, enjoying the view of rolling hills covered with grapevines.
You don’t have to go to Italy to write a headnote. Set a scene in Chinatown, around your best friend’s table, or at the beach. The point is to take your reader there and describe it specifically enough so they can imagine it.
4. Bowl readers over with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is contagious and gets people excited about your recipe. I love the conversational style of Ina Garten’s cookbooks, like she’s your best friend letting you in on her secrets. Here’s a partial headnote for Jeffrey’s Roast Chicken, from How Easy is That? It shows how much she loves to cook and how she thinks everyone else should love it as well:
“Recently, I met some beautiful young women from Glamour magazine. They make a roast chicken they call ‘Engagement Chicken’ because every time one of them makes it for her boyfriend, she gets engaged! How wonderful is that? That’s the best reason I ever heard to roast a chicken…”
It’s like you are sitting next to her at a restaurant bar, drinking wine and wearing your Sex in the City shoes, trading stories and laughing. She exaggerates a little for effect, another time-honored tradition of storytelling. Even though her style is casual, though, she’s dead serious about getting you to make that chicken.
5. Extol without resorting to vague words like “wonderful” and “delicious.” Use specifics instead. Here’s a partial headnote from Susanna Hoffman’s cookbook, The Olive and the Caper, for Classic Shrimp and Tomatoes:
“Hardly a dish exists on the honor roll of Greek cuisine with more names than shrimp baked with tomatoes and feta…The proliferation of names gives testimony to one thing: a dish so popular, widespread, and classic certainly must sing with flavor. And it does. Few cheeses go with shellfish, but sheep’s milk feta blankets the tender shrimp with a sharp tang the way a wash of lemon juice cannot…”
I like the way she glories the dish, not her version of it. And she tells you why it’s wonderful, rather than resorting to using the word.
Do you love a particular cookbook because of its headnotes? Tell me which one and why.