Ireland: A Highly Subjective Guide to Irish Cookbooks

The title should suggest to you that the author has strong feelings on the subject. Well, strong enough.

Irish cooking is understandably afflicted with associations with Ireland, arguably one of the most beautiful and over-romanticized pieces of real estate on the planet. This causes many Irish cookbooks which we've seen in the US to become (a) pictures of beautiful landscapes -- gorgeous, but inedible, and casting no particular illumination on the food itself: (b) folios of lovely Irish-style calligraphy -- pretty enough, but typically hard to reproduce small enough to get in very many recipes: and (c) collections of misunderstood or mistranscribed "traditional" recipes which no one here has eaten for a very long time. These three factors taken together are something which, in our household, we refer to as "the leprechaun factor". Cookbooks with too high a Leprechaun Factor never make it out of the bookstore to our shelves (where at last count about 550 cookbooks of various kinds reside).

The following is a list of some of the cookbooks that did make it home. We recommend them to you: the recipes work, and the writing in them is either enjoyable, or clear, and usually (thankfully) both. The vast majority of them are paperbacks. As usual, some of them are hard to find or out of print. We've given links to Amazon.com for those that are in print or can be found used at Amazon. For other out-of-print books, try Abebooks or Bibliofind.

Allen, Myrtle: The Ballymaloe Cookbook Probably the most famous of the "new wave" of Irish cookbooks which feature both traditional Irish recipes and newer "twists" on those same old themes. Our edition is from Gill and Macmillan in the UK: ISBN 0-7171-1339-6.

Campbell, Georgina,Good Food from Ireland our copy comes from Grafton Books, 1991: ISBN 0-586-20859-3. A no-nonsense compilation of modern and traditional recipes. Good background on the recipes, a few color photos in the middle of the book. Campbell is in a position to know what she's talking about, being the food columnist for the Sunday Press, and a freelance food writer for Taste Magazine, and others.

Fitzgibbon, Theodora, Taste of Ireland: our copy is from Pan Books, 1968: ISBN 0-330-02458-2. One of the better ones. Period photography and quotations from period cooking sources, to go with the traditional recipes. Some surprises in here, such as a "scratch" recipe for drisheen. There are two versions of this book: the one that's just "A Taste of Ireland" omits the pictures. But the images of the Ireland that was, once upon a time, and has largely passed away, are worth seeing.

Fitzgibbon, Theodora,Irish Traditional Food: our copy is from Pan Books, 1984: ISBN 0-330-28205-0. Another good one by Theodora, with a little more background on the recipes, and (unusual) each recipe's name in Irish as well as English. Some recipes excerpted from 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century sources. A decent index (too many Irish cookbooks lack this...).

Irwin, Florence, The Cookin' Woman: Irish Country Recipes our copy is from the Blackstaff Press, 1986: ISBN 0-85640-373-3. One of the great classics. Irwin was a traveling "home ec" or "domestic science" teacher (her official title was "Itinerant Cookery Instructress"), who between 1905 and 1913 went from place to place in Northern Ireland -- staying in both big towns and the tiniest villages -- showing country people how to handle the new kinds of food and cookers which were becoming available, and learning from them as much as she taught. This book preserves much of the feel and detail of country cooking at that period, and the sheer number of recipes in it is pretty surprising. The book is newly back in print, in paperback.

Kinsella, Mary, An Irish Farmhouse Cookbook: our copy is from Appletree Press, 1983: ISBN 0-86281-100-9. Another no-nonsense book: no pictures, not too much background material, just recipes and a lot of them. The author is a County Wexford woman. Some useful diagrams of the main cuts of pork, beef and lamb with the Irish terms for them -- useful if you're trying to explain things to a US butcher.

Laverty, Maura, Full and Plenty: our version is from The Irish Flour Millers Association, 1960, 1966: no ISBN. Our copy is a hardcover, but the link to Amazon above is to a new paperback edition published in 2001. The book also turns up in the UK as a three-part paperback. All the content, especially the baking section, is unfailingly Irish and unfailingly good. Additionally, each section begins with a really charming short story concerning food in small-town Irish life. One of the best in our collection.

Lennon, Biddy Whyte: Poolbeg Book of Traditional Irish Cooking: Poolbeg Press, 1990: ISBN 1-85371-092-X. Another really good one. Lennon looks at Irish food in terms of its history -- the different kinds of things Irish people ate at different periods -- and gives plenty of recipes. A super read and a great book to work from.

Mahon, Bríd, Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink:: our copy is from Poolbeg Press, 1991, ISBN 1-85371-142-X: but the Amazon link seems to be to a newer paperback edition. Almost entirely food history, with a small section of "Irish country house recipes" in the back. A terrific book.

McCormack, Malachi, Malachi McCormicks Irish Country Cooking: our edition is from Equation, 1988: ISBN 1-85536-082-1 -- but the book has now been repackaged as "Malachi McCormack's Irish Country Cooking" and is in paperback. Our hardcover has biggish print and fancy typography, making for a handsome enough book, but also meaning only one recipe per page. The recipes are traditional ones, but don't necessarily reflect country cooking as practiced in Ireland today. Still, a goodish book.

Minogue, Ethel, Modern and Traditional Irish Cooking: New Burlington Books, 1988, ISBN 1-85348-103-3. Amazon has two listings for Minogue: Irish Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes and Irish Country Cooking (The Great Cookbooks Assortment) I have no idea which of these is the republication of the book we have. Anyway, the one we've got is one which is both extremely beautiful, in terms of the food photography, and very good in terms of the recipes (wild duck with spiced oranges, salt beef with cabbage and parsley sauce, ray with brown butter sauce, mussel and onion stew...) Definitely worth having, if you can find it.

O'Mara, Veronica Jane, and O'Reilly, Fionnuala, Cooking the Books: An Irish Literary Cookbook: Town House, 1991, ISBN 0-948524-29-4. This has been reissued as A Trifle, a Coddle, a Fry: an Irish Literary Cookbook.

A literary angle on Irish food, featuring recipes associated with (or favorite recipes of) George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Mary Lavin, Somerville & Ross, Oliver St John Gogarty, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett, Molly Keane, Patrick Kavanagh, Sean O' Casey, Kate O'Brien, and George Moore. Delightful stuff, full of quotations and background on the writers as well as the food.

Sexton, Regina, A Little History of Irish Food: our edition is from Kyle Cathie Limited, 1998, ISBN 1 85626 243 X. Hardcover. Beautiful woodcuts, Irish poetry (many excerpts from the Vision of MacConglinne, the premier poem about ancient Irish food), terrific recipes, much good history. I could only wish there were even more recipes, because the ones Sexton gives are terrific (stuffed roast pork steaks with baked apples and potato cakes, dulse soda scones, roast saddle of venison with crabapple and sloe jelly, turfy eggs, yellowmeal bread, potato puddings...).

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