Four Books to Chew on To Ward off Winter’s Chill
To stay healthy, eat healthy. Here’s some great books to put you in the kitchen and take the chill out of winter.
| 13 Feb 2026 | 04:48
When the Oxford Companion to Food was first published in 1999 it was described by one reviewer as the only food book you will ever need. The 2,600 word tome is one of four great books on food that is being revised and reissued. (
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A heavyweight battle could be shaping up over which is the best of the weighty food books on the market was we heading into another probable week of ice and occasional snow,
When the Oxford what better way to stay warm than to head for the kitchen with one of the yummy new cookbooks out this month such Mildred Council’s as celebrity chef Mary Baker’s Mary 90: My Very Best Recipes, Beth Sinclair and Lexi Harrison’s Crowded Kitchen: No-Fuss Drinks, Dinners, Desserts, And More For Every Type Of Gathering , both due on February 24, plus the other 10 February entries listed on the Forbes website at https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/best-cookbooks-winter-2026/
On a more classic note, how about these four, each with a recently updated edition packed with tasty tidbits of then-and-still-now nutrition news to prove its continuing popularity.
When the Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford University Press) was first published in 1999 foodies were in Heaven zipping through its 892 large pages with 2,650 A-to-Z entries written by more than 50 experts from as far afield as the Philippines ,Norway, and Australia. Together, like the latest edition (2024), they offered inside info on such esoteric goodies as yarby (the Australian name for certain crayfish) plus a plethora of healthy and culture-based essays including then-and-still current nutrition debates on vegetarianism, the value of carbs, and the nature of dietary laws.
Who could imagine a more complete food book?
The Cambridge University Press, that’s who. Its two-volume boxed set of the Cambridge World History of Food (2000) beats Oxford by 1,064 pages, each page serving up a juicy gem while tracking everything from the history of pierogi to an essay on “The question of Paleolithic neutrino and modern health from the end to the beginning.”
The list of subjects written by more than 250 food folks from 15 different countries follows the history of pretty much everything people have hunted, gathered, domesticated, and eaten, plus their impact on culture and demography, throughout the span of human life on earth. It’s delicious reading enabling those who recognize potatoes and asparagus to learn about such less known regional food as the evergreen fruit ackee, that aubergine is an eggplant, that “swedes” are rutabagas, and that “bulgur” comes from “bulghur” which means “bruised grain, making it possible to base menus on some of what our very long-ago ancestors did. As a bonus, just lifting the 5-pound set from one hand to the other qualifies as a daily morning workout.
On a lighter note, pound wise, there’s Understanding Normal and Clinical Nutrition (West Publishing 12th edition, 2020). Yes, it’s text book but saying that is sort of like noting the plain brown wrapping once used to disguise a spicy novel. Inside, the book bubbles and brims with readable charts and menus plus writing a lively as, “There would be little problem identifying nutrition quacks if they still rode into town in a wooden wagon hawking snake oil.”
Last but definitely not least, there’s The Joy of Cooking, published privately in 1931 by Irma S Rombauer, a homemaker in St Louis. Five years later the book was snapped up by the Bobbs-Merrill company which knew a good thing when they read it. In the nearly 90 years since, it has become the kitchen bible with more than 20,000,000 copies in print. The latest edition has been kept in the family, revised and expanded by her great grandson and his wife. But for true fans, copies of the original go for as much as $140 on Amazon.