The culinary cozy genre is populated by wonderful authors who are inspired by a true love of cooking. Some of them focus on recipes that reflect their own dietary concerns. Libby Klein struggles with Hashimoto’s and celiac disease, so her Poppy McAllister Mysteries feature gluten-free recipes. Daryl Wood Gerber’s series, which include the Fairy Garden Mysteries, also feature gluten-free recipes because she’s a “true blue celiac.”
Other culinary cozy authors like Mia Manansala (Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries), Raquel V. Reyes (Caribbean Kitchen Mysteries), and Jennifer J. Chow (Night Market Mysteries) include recipes that are a tribute to the cultures their books celebrate. Leslie Karst, who writes the Sally Solari Mysteries, is a trained chef. Kim Davis, author of the Cupcake Catering Mysteries, is a baker extraordinaire. Leslie Budewitz (the Spice Shop Mysteries) writes culinary cozies “because I love food and find it the perfect way to give heart and soul to a story.” Popular authors like Edith Maxwell, (the Country Store Mysteries, under the pen name “Maddie Day”) pen the genre because they enjoy cooking and are really good at it
That’s not me.
My motivation to include recipes in my mysteries was far less inspirational. I’ve never been much of a cook. But describing Cajun cuisine in my Cajun Country Mystery series made me hungry and I thought it might have the same effect on readers, so I decided to include recipes in each book. Thus, an accidental culinary cozy author was born.
Not being a natural in the kitchen, I’ve made some embarrassing mistakes. I left an ingredient out of one recipe, so if you have a hardcover edition of Body on the Bayou, sorry! I had five hundred recipe cards printed and then a reader alerted me to the fact there was a missing measurement for one of the ingredients. Guess who hand-wrote “1/4th cup” onto five hundred postcards? I built a whole subplot around sweet potato pralines, which are my go-to treat whenever I visit a particular French Quarter candy shop. Here’s how the recipe looked in Fatal Cajun Festival:
I labor to come up with my own take on whatever recipes I choose for a book. I took so many stabs at creating a great jambalaya that I’m sure tears wound up being an ingredient in a few of the less successful tries. Occasionally I’ve cheated and talked a loved one into sharing their recipe in exchange for full credit and a huge amount of gratitude. But I’m proud to say I’ve actually invented a few of the recipes included in my series.
Yet here’s my odd character quirk. While I don’t love cooking, I adore cookbooks, especially those spanning the decades from the 1920s through the 1970s. I’ve developed such an obsessive habit of collecting them that I now own over a hundred cookbooks dating as far back as the late nineteenth century. They offer a fascinating window into our culinary past, from the ingredients listed – some of which no longer exist – to the artwork and writing style, which reflect the tenor of their times.
My personal collection inspired the Vintage Cookbook Mystery series, which revolves around protagonist Ricki James-Diaz opening a gift shop that sells vintage cookbooks and kitchenware in a New Orleans’ culinary house museum. I’ve had a blast combing through my own collection to find recipes I can adapt for the series. With Bayou Book Thief, I culled from a few favorites, like The Photoplay Cook Book [sic] of the Stars.
For my newest release, Wine and Died in New Orleans, I curated a selection of recipes featuring wine as an ingredient, making sure to include non-alcoholic versions of each recipe as well.
Updating recipes from bygone decades requires its own detective work, but that’s part of the fun. My investigations have revealed substitutes for discontinued ingredients. Figuring out how to translate, say, 1930s cooking instructions to current stove requirements has been another test of my sleuthing skills. And thanks to my vintage cookbook obsession, I now know that Yola D’Avril, the mysterious third person sharing the Photoplay “Cook Book” page with legends Greta Garbo and Cecil B. DeMille, was a French-American actress whose career spanned 1925 to 1953.
I never set out to be a culinary cozy author, but sometimes life’s most unexpected journeys turn out to be the most fulfilling. And in the case of the jambalaya recipe I finally landed on, filling as well.
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