A History of Cookbooks looks at the cookbooks from a literary and historical perspective, providing an overview of how this genre was developed as an important part of food culture from the late middle ages onwards. Early brief notes with ingredients were gradually transformed into detailed recipes with particular structure, grammar, and vocabulary. But this book covers more than standard recipe collections, studying cookbooks from various Western cultures and languages. The author shows how cookbooks contain more information than just recipes: they say a great deal about nutrition, morals, manners, history, and menus while often providing entertaining reflections and commentaries. This book shows how cookbooks represent an interesting and important branch of non-fiction literature.