Inside a Legendary Designer's Recipe Sketchbook

November 11, 2022 8:22 AM

Cipe Pineles changed magazines forever. Her illustrated recipes tell a personal tale. A pioneering magazine art director illustrated recipes that became a book after her death, in part through the work of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat illustrator Wendy MacNaughton. MacNaughton had never heard of Pineles when she came across her forgotten sketchbook

"Pineles never completed the [cookbook] in her lifetime ... Its creation was a happy pursuit that memorialized the foods she grew up with.

Pineles’s sketchbook languished in the cellar of her New York home until it was purchased by a collector. ... Unbeknownst to either the collector or to Pineles’s family, though, it would one day find its way into the hands of modern stewards who would finally allow this very special cookbook to be appreciated by all."

[From Paula Forbes' excellent Stained Page News, a cookbook newsletter. Small disclosure: I wrote once for SPN a few years ago.]

posted by fruitslinger (3 comments total)

Thanks for posting this! I have the book and love it, and nothing in the article was new to me, but still I found the article enchanting and inspiring, and the choice of illustrations excellent.
posted by mumimor at 9:22 AM on November 11, 2022

I adore Pineles' art, the flow of the food and words across the page, the homey Eastern European Jewish recipes. Most of all, I love the title: Leave Me Alone with the Recipes. I need a tiny plaque with that or maybe a needlepoint of it to point to whenever I'm poring over cookbooks and someone wants to interrupt me.
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:14 AM on November 11, 2022

I was struck by how contemporary the illustrations looked to my 2022 eyes!
posted by fruitslinger at 6:37 AM on November 12, 2022