The Incredible Story of Cooking: from prehistory to today, 500,000 years of adventure
written by Stéphane Douay
drawn by Benoist Simmat
translated by Montana Kane
2021, 2024

This is such a fabulous premise, and at first glance it looked well done, with good art and nine chapters creating an interesting outline about a truly fascinating topic. I was extremely pleased to acquire it at the last Small Press Expo. After reading it, though, my conclusion is that it was… decent. But it didn’t live up to the premise and that was ultimately disappointing. As a 200-page graphic novel covering 500 thousand years of global history, it was obviously always going to be a quick skim over the topics, but it often felt more like disjointed trivia rather than even a summary. There was some general overview and where there wasn’t, the trivia was still fascinating.

What really struck me, though, was that the authors don’t seem to appreciate or enjoy food. Given that it was about how people throughout history had developed all sorts of wild cuisines, it was weird and off-putting how the authors’ distaste for those cuisines came through so much stronger than the historical figures’ enjoyment of them. There was more focus on the politics of food distribution than there was on the development of the dishes, and the text was often felt both judgemental and mocking.

There were a number of basic recipes that were referenced in the text, but of course were very generalized in such a way that you couldn’t actually follow them, which makes sense for being embedded in the story. However, there’s also a section at the end that contains 22 recipes from around the world and throughout time, and they just aren’t good recipes. It’s not that the dishes aren’t good, but that the instructions are poorly written, with ingredients and processes skipped or listed out of order, and written in ways that introduce a lot of ambiguity. An experienced cook or baker could probably fill in the blanks, but they are clearly written by someone who doesn’t cook or know how to write directions for others to follow a process.

I don’t want to just slam this book, because it was interesting and well-illustrated, but it was such a great concept. Why couldn’t it have been better?