COVID-19 cookbooks: war and pleasure in US kitchens

Abstract

In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, as home cooking grew in the US, sales of cookbooks surged and community cookbooks started showing up in the households of the country. This essay is concerned with community cookbooks in the pandemic era. Drawing on the familiar ‘COVID-19 is a war’ metaphor, it investigates the relationship between cooking during the First and Second World Wars and food preparation during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. It argues that the cooking practised in community cookbooks is militarised to serve the needs of the nation and provides pleasure through recipes of American traditional cuisine. It proposes a theoretical framework on the relationship between militarism, pleasure, and food in contemporary war cookbooks.