The Little Women Cookbook

Wini Moranville

October 1, 2019

Harvard Common Press

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Blurb:

Experience the exciting and heartwarming world of the March sisters and Little Women right in your own kitchen.

Here at last is the first cookbook to celebrate the scrumptious and comforting foods that play a prominent role in Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women. If your family includes a Little Women fan, or if you yourself are one, with this book you can keep the magic and wonder of the beloved tale alive for years to come. Do you wonder what makes the characters so excited to make—and eat!—sweets and desserts like the exotically named Blancmange or the mysterious Bonbons with Mottoes, along with favorites like Apple Turnovers, Plum Pudding, and Gingerbread Cake? Find out for yourself with over 50 easy-to-make recipes for these delectable treats and more, all updated for the modern kitchen.

From Hannah’s Pounded Potatoes to Amy’s Picnic Lemonade, from the charming Chocolate Drop Cookies that Professor Bhaer always offers to Meg’s twins to hearty dinners that Hannah and Marmee encourage the March sisters to learn to make, you’ll find an abundance of delicious teatime drinks and snacks, plus breakfasts, brunches, lunches, suppers, and desserts. Featuring full-color photos, evocative illustrations, fun and uplifting quotes from the novel, and anecdotes about Louisa May Alcott, this is a book that any Little Women fan will love to have.

Amazon buy link: The Little Women Cookbook

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I am a minor Little Women fan. While I don’t go out of my way to absorb everything Little Women, if it jumps in front of me, I do tend to read or watch it. So, obviously, when given the opportunity to read and review Wini Moranville’s The Little Women Cookbook I enthusiastically accepted.

Mind you, I didn’t really expect much more than a novelty, but The Little Women Cookbook proves to be more than that. It’s like taking a tour of 1800’s cooking, how things were accomplished, what ingredients were used, and what foods were eaten.

I always presumed that macaroni and cheese was a recent recipe. Nope. It’s included in this cookbook as one of the dishes that people would have enjoyed. Amazingly enough, in the original recipe, one would have been instructed to put a shovel (yep, you’ve read that right) into a hot fire to place it across the mac and cheese to brown the top!

Also, since cooks didn’t have convenient gelatin in a box, they had to do it from scratch with cow hooves. (Yep, if you thought the gelatin was vegetarian, it ain’t so.) Fortunately, the author refrains from providing that particular part of the blancmange recipe and substitutes unflavored gelatin (still not vegetarian).

One of the other interesting things (there are many!) that I learned was that Louisa May Alcott’s father was vegetarian and started a community called Fruitlands, which ultimately didn’t succeed. Knowing how people have reacted (and still do) to vegetarians in the States, I imagine that must have seemed like a crazy thing at the time.

I found the recipes to be interesting and some look yummy judging from the beautiful photographs. While I may review a lot of vegan and vegetarian cookbooks, this is not one of them. There are many meat and fish recipes incorporated as a normal household would have eaten during the time that Little Women takes place.

The Little Women Cookbook would make a wonderful gift for the Little Women fan in your life…or maybe even yourself.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Pre-order from Amazon.

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rating:

4 butterflies and a ladybug out of 5 butterflies

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