A cookbook with recipes inspired ... by great works

It is often said, according to a cliché, that cooking is anart. So there are those who wanted to make this rhetorical connection explicit: it was Felicity Souter, an artist, writer, and cook based in London, who is passionate about the fusion of the arts, and convinced that good food should be as good as it tastes, and that every bite should be savored as a work of art. That’s how she decided to create a very special cookbook: it’s called Painting the Plate, is published by Prestel, and is out for now only in the UK, the US, and Germany, sold for £29.99, $39.99, and 36 euros respectively (no word on whether and when it will be released in Italy), and combines artistic masterpieces with simple recipes that will turn your dining room table into a feast for the eyes and palate.

The idea is simple: Souter has created recipes inspired directly by the works of great artists. Filled with flamboyant photographs, high-quality reproductions, and anecdotes about the artists, especially related to their relationship with food, this unique cookbook connects great art with the culinary world. To create the recipes in this book, Felicity Souter delved into the lives of artists past and present, uncovering fascinating stories, eating habits, and cultural traditions.

The book features appetizers, main courses, side dishes, desserts or drinks that visually echo the artwork and reflect the culinary connection to its artist. More than fifty masterpieces from a wide range of genres and periods include works by Marina AbramoviÄ?, Jean Michel Basquiat, Georgette Chen, Salvador Dalí, Jacob Lawrence, Man Ray, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock. All interspersed with double pages on artists and particularly, as mentioned, their relationship with food. Did you know, for example, that Claude Monet ate lunch every day at 11:30 a.m. (since he always woke up at dawn)? Or that Vincent van Gogh, when he did not have absinthe with him, of which he was a heavy drinker, drank turpentine? Or that Mark Rothko turned down a commission for a luxurious New York restaurant when, having gone to that very restaurant for dinner, he discovered how steep the bill was because, as he had to tell a friend, “anyone who pays that kind of money for that kind of food will never look at a painting of mine”?

The illustrations are meant to reveal a striking similarity between recipe and artwork. An abstract painting by Lee Krasner is transformed into a colorful mixed vegetable salad, a Barbara Hepworth oval-shaped sculpture into a crispy loaf of bread, a snowy haystack by Monet into a sugar-dusted breakfast muffin, a Yves Klein sponge into an electric blue martini, and on the cover one of Mark Rothko’s paintings comes to life in the form of a cake.

There is no need to think that these are difficult recipes: there are challenging ones but also fairly easy ones, everyday recipes aimed at cooks of all abilities, designed to whet the creative appetites of readers and chefs alike. Those who wish to explore further can check out the website.

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A cookbook with recipes inspired ... by great works

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