As recommended by the readers of Electric Speed in January 2025

• This is probably recency bias, but earlier this week I finished reading Julia Child's My Life in France. It was the last book she published and was a collaboration with her great nephew, Alex Prud'homme. She died while they were working on the book and Alex finished it. There are no recipes, but plenty of stories about her life with Paul Child in France. Mostly in the period 1948 - 1952, when they lived first in Paris and then in Marseilles. Also some recollections of later life in Provence. She writes about her experience as a student at Le Cordon Bleu and her ongoing fascination with the techniques of French cooking. For us writers, she talks at length about the years-long process of writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking and its sequel. Having only seen Julia in old TV clips, I had a very narrow impression of her. This book gave me great insight into her personality, sense of humor, the enduring love she had for Paul, and her seemingly limitless joie de vivre. —Mike Johnston
• As a former longtime cookbook publisher, I could provide an extensive list of wonderful and worthy list of authors, chefs and food writers … However, one might start with Cross Creek Cookery by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who wrote The Yearling. After all, good writing and good cooking make for a good read. —Jamscon
• The list of favorite cookbooks with a story could be long as it’s one of my favorite genres. First to mind are Gesine Bullock-Prado’s two books, My Life from Scratch, which is memoir with recipes, and Let Them Eat Cake, cookbook with memories that I turn to time and again to make desserts. I’m enjoying Poilâne by Apollonia Poilâne about the Parisian bread bakery. In the same vein, I long ago enjoyed Brother Juniper’s Bread Book: Slow Rise as Method and Metaphor by Br. Peter Reinhart. And as I look on my bookshelf, I have good memories of Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager by Landgon Cook, again memoir with some recipes. I’m drawn to cookbooks by restaurateurs so I’ve read The Zuni Café Cookbook, by the late Judy Rodgers (Zuni was my favorite restaurant in San Francisco when I lived there thirty years ago), Tartine and Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, and On Vegetables by Jeremy Fox, Michelen-starred chef of Ubuntu. Anything by M.F.K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl, or Julia Child. I’ll stop now. —Barbara Boyd
• My favorite cookbook that tells a story is La Cocina Cubana Sencilla: Simple Cuban Cooking. It was written by my father, Paul L. Adams, MD. He wrote it in memory of my stepmother. Interspersed with her favorite recipes are family stories of how he met and came to marry her, along with stories of our family life and visits to Cuba before Castro. The publisher is Butler Books. —Christine Adams
• If you don't get dozens of people recommending Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, I'll be shocked! Her writing voice is warm, friendly, a little bit bossy, and very New Yorky. I can't imagine reading this book without wanting to cook every recipe and without wishing you and Laurie were besties. —Leslie Pietrzyk
• The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas has nothing more than line drawings but the pictures she puts in my head? The lava-cracked drive from the airport in Iceland at 5am, how to dip buttermilk rye bread in a kettle where a savory boiled meat is slow cooking, the appearance of hundreds of loaves of Finnish black bread, like large flat bagels, strung up on poles in bakeries, the array of treats (and order in which you eat them) over a four-cups-of-coffee full-blown coffeetable (her spelling) are the visions I carry everywhere. I have not traveled enough but I am shocked I haven’t been to any of these countries. Baking is more than a blue tin of months old butter cookies! —Kimberly Olson Fakih
• I love Michelle Lopez’s Weeknight Baking book! She breaks down the recipes into easy steps over the course of a week, and often times she shares why a specific recipe or type of recipe is in the book, and she shares how she was the resident baker at her office job for many years. It’s a good one! My husband and I also love Heroes’ Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook. It sets up recipes be popular playable races in the game—humans, elves, dwarves, etc. each section has a tavern menu and it’s so cool! For players of Dungeon & Dragons it’s a cool way to bring some adventure to your everyday life—we all gotta eat! It could even add to the atmosphere of a campaign game! —Tracy Erler
• Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South by Vivian Howard. "Culinary storytelling with 250 recipes celebrating the flavors of North Carolina's coastal plain by Vivian Howard, star of PBS's A Chef's Life and Somewhere South." Part cookbook and part memoir, it's packed with delightful stories, beautiful photographs, and recipes that make your mouth water. —Denise Wolf
• My favorite cooking book that tells a story is Eat Less Water by Florencia Ramirez (Red Hen Press). It discusses how we can make a difference through our food choices. "Eat Less Water tells the story of water served on our plates: an eye-opening account of the under-appreciated environmental threat of water scarcity, a useful cookbook with water-sustainable recipes accompanying each chapter, and a fascinating personal narrative that will teach the reader how they, too, can eat less water." —Mona Alvarado Frazier
• Manna Cafe and Bakery Cookbook by Barb Pratzel: Manna was an unassuming husband-and-wife-owned cafe in a strip mall in Madison, Wisconsin that sadly closed in 2020, largely due to the pandemic. Any meal, bakery item, or coffee was prepared with the best ingredients and was uniquely delicious. Learn about their beginnings as a bed and breakfast and so much more. My fav: gluten-free triple lemon cake! —JK
• Re cookbooks with stories - how about the OG novel/memoir with recipes, Heartburn by Nora Ephron. Great story, keeper recipes! —Carol Holding
• My favorite cookbook that tells stories is—hands down!—DEEP RUN ROOTS by Vivian Howard. Even if you don't cook, the stories make this one an excellent buy! —Kristy Woodson Harvey
• I don't know if we are allowed to toot our own horn, but in my "Voyager Cook" cookbooks, almost every recipe has a story about it. So, of course they are my favorite. "The Voyager Cook Collection" is a two-book eclectic collection of more than 480 recipes, vegan dishes, preparation tips, kitchen notes, and kitchen tips. My wife and I have traveled to more than 37 countries and all around the U.S. Wherever we were, I would try a local dish. If we liked it, I would ask to speak to the cook, compliment them, and then ask for the recipe. Most cooks were glad to give me the ingredients but not the recipe. The fun part was I got to experiment with the ingredients until I got it right. —Antaeus Balevre
• Hands down The Lost Kitchen and Big Heart Little Stove by Erin French. Never have I wanted to curl up in a cookbook more while simultaneously booking a trip to Freedom, Maine. Also Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes is not necessarily a book on cooking but just as much of a visceral experience of the memoir as her descriptions of the countryside and architecture. —Lauren Chronister
• I'm researching 1970s commune culture for a series of novels, and came across Lucy Horton's Country Commune Cooking, originally published in 1972 and reissued (with new afterwords from the author and illustrator) in 2019. The author spent a year in the early 70s hitchhiking from commune to commune, collecting recipes and living and participating in the communities. The book is filled with fascinating slices of life from her travels, as well as close to 200 recipes of creative, mostly vegetarian dishes that can be scaled to feed a crowd. This book perfectly captures a moment, before Mollie Katzen published Moosewood, and Chez Panisse was just opening its doors, when large numbers of bright young people were experimenting with a new way of living as well as cooking and eating. My copy has lots of "to try" tabs added. —Heather Dodge Martin
• I’m excited to tell you about my favorite cookbook because I love it so much I mention it at any opportunity. Feel free to edit this down because I can gush on and on about it. I stumbled on Molly O’Neill’s New York Cookbook, when it was first published over 30 years ago, but I cook recipes from it all the time, and gift it often, too (though I think the hardcover is OOP now). Being a born-and-bred New Yorker, the title intrigued me, but what compelled me to buy it were the stories and recipes from some of New York’s most iconic people and places. For example, there’s Katherine Hepburn’s brownies, the original David’s Cookies, Sylvia’s Soul Food Queen of Harlem, and even the real-life “soup nazi,” from Seinfeld. All recipes are accompanied by interesting stories, or factoids, and there are callout boxes about New York’s various ethnic enclaves, (e.g., Chinatown), and retailers (e.g., Zabar’s). You can find any food you can think of, from knishes to jerk chicken. The recipes are understandable and delicious. My favorite is the “Fig & Prosciutto Stuffing.” It was the 1992 winner of the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook and James Beard Food and Beverage Book awards. —Jenifer Vogt
• One of my favorite cookbooks that I often peruse over and over is an oldie: Farm Journal's Best-Ever Recipes, published in the United States in 1978. I grabbed a review copy when I had my first job in the publicity department of Doubleday & Co. in New York. At home in my family's apartment in Brooklyn I became fascinated with the short blurbs that accompanied each farm-tested recipe. A city girl, I was enchanted by the farm wives' comments like, "There are five hungry men at our house who never tire of this dish." It was a whole different world to me. I still have my copy and I still make dishes from it—often! —Ellen Acconcia
• My favorite cookbook that tells stories is Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. Kenny was the owner of a New York corner store turned restaurant, and his book is packed with stories of his life and the lives of the people he fed. It's hilarious, cranky, and uplifting, and the recipes are great. I pick it up to read two or three times a week just for fun. —Michele Mantynen
• A Passion for Ice Cream, by Emily Luchetti. There are 95 recipes for ice cream, but the book is so much more. For example, ice cream sandwiches—not just ice cream, but the cookie that goes with it, too. I love this book. I indulge regularly. —Aline Soules