A Deep-ish Dive into The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook

And a few thoughts on influencer books

Hi cookbook friends! Something a little different this week. Back to our usual programming next week.

If you haven’t already guessed, I am kind of choosy when it comes to cookbooks…one might call me a cookbook snob. An equal opportunity cookbook snob, to be sure—I like encyclopedic books, single subject books, lavishly photo’ed ones, and ones that are simply illustrated. Regardless of the format, though, I like books with voice and expertise, that teach me something or transport me. I hold cookbooks to high standards, and the absolutely last thing I want one to be is generic.

That’s an adjective that’s often used against influencer/content creator cookbooks. In many cases I get it, and I’m generally less interested in these titles. (There are, of course, exceptions. Two quick examples: The recipes in Justine Cooks by Justine Doiron build flavor in such interesting ways, and I love how she combines ingredients. I also lose myself in Dan Pelosi’s books, Let’s Eat and the upcoming Let’s Party. There’s a deep family food culture he’s exploring, and it’s done in a really fun way.)

Another knock against creator cookbooks is that they’re often built by committee—written by a behind-the-scenes collaborator and, frequently that collaborator curates most of the recipes in the book from the influencer’s TikTok videos. Depending on the project and the timeline, there may be other team members, such as recipe developers to write recipes for the book from scratch, recipe testers, and a project manager. The author’s talent manager may also be involved. (By the way, all this is usually true for celebrity and chef cookbooks.)

I focus on the titles and authors that excite me. To get a sense of what those are, you can look back through Cookbookery Collective’s archives.

But, I can’t ignore The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook by Meredith Hayden.

In case you aren’t familiar with her, Meredith Hayden is a massively popular content creator with a huge and loyal community. Her first cookbook The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook (Bookshop/Amazon) was on the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks, which in the cookbook world is very rare. I have it on good authority that it has sold in the realm of 108,000 copies, exceedingly rare, and surely a massive win for its publisher Ten Speed Press.

Hayden is definitely my type of creator. She went to culinary school, was a personal chef, and clearly can cook. Also, her co-author, Rachel Holzman, is credited on the title page, which I appreciate. Hayden has been clear that she doesn’t consider herself a food writer.

As the weeks have progressed and Hayden’s book sales have continued apace, I’ve become really intrigued by how she converted her followers into cookbook buyers. (She currently has 1.4 million followers on Instagram and 2.3 million on TikTok, although I’m not sure how many she had when she sold the book or when the book launched.) Let me be clear, this doesn’t always happen; sometimes a creator’s big online audience translates into only meager book sales. From a publisher’s point of view, choosing which creator to invest in is an art, not a science.

As someone who cares about cookbooks and the health of the cookbook industry, I decided I needed to pay attention to this book. I know I am not this book’s main audience. Hayden’s followers are primarily women in their 20s and early 30s, most of whom don’t cook often, according to Hayden herself. But I read and cooked from the book to try to understand its appeal. Here are my observations.

The Story Is Strong

Another knock on many creator cookbooks is that the authors just don’t have much of a story to tell when they’re writing a book at 25 years old, having started cooking and TikTok-ing in their parents’ kitchen during the pandemic (a surprisingly common theme).

There’s some narrative arc here, and it’s one that most of Hayden’s fans are likely familiar with. After college, Hayden got a marketing job at Condé Nast and went to the Institute of Culinary Education at night.¹ In early 2020, she began work as a personal chef. When she was laid off from Condé during the pandemic, she made cheffing her full time job, and she started making and sharing TikToks that amassed a legion of followers. (The promo copy on the back of the book made me laugh: “Inspired by years of working as a chef in New York City and the Hamptons…” Years! Four whole years!)

Hayden went to school, hustled, worked hard, and built a business and following. That’s a compelling story.

The Recipes are Solid

I’ve made seven recipes from the book: Stracciatella with Marinated Sungolds, Pork Sausage Burgers (recommended by Cookbookery reader

Ginger Boden

and truly delicious—thank you Ginger!), Chili-Braised Cauliflower, Lemongrass Chicken and Rice Noodle Salad, Broccoli Cavatelli, Shake ‘n Bake Chicken with Hot Honey Tomatoes, and Pork Tacos with Roasted Peach Salsa. And they’ve all been very tasty.

Did they teach me new skills and push me in new culinary directions? Mostly no, although I did learn how to “make” stracciatella by mixing torn mozzarella with cream and letting them hang out together in the fridge for a few hours. The overall food vibe is farmer’s market with a Nantucket and Hamptons twist.

To me, some of the recipes in this book are a bit too fussy; they could have been streamlined. Other recipes are almost super basic, such as a corn and tomato salad where the “recipe” involves dressing the veg in chili oil and topping it with chives. But, again, I am not the audience for this book.

Aside from being chock-full of tomatoes—it’s a tomato lover’s paradise!—what’s most interesting to me about the recipes is that many call for what I consider “luxury” ingredients, or at least ones that a beginning cook might be nervous about attempting: there’s a porterhouse recipe, two with duck or duck fat, a couple of oyster recipes, four with crab, five with lobster, and a clambake.

The book includes a lobster tutorial spread², but are young, beginner cooks (many of whom are certainly on a budget) really going to be cooking lobster and duck? Probably not, and it probably doesn’t matter, because of…

The Lifestyle Aspect

It’s worth paying attention to the book’s subtitle: Seasonal Recipes for Everyday Luxury and Elevated Entertaining. And, it’s true that many of the book’s recipes are geared towards hosting³. There’s a section at the end with instructions on how to put together menus for large groups, along with several sample menus.

But, it’s those words luxury and elevated that clicked for me. This is why it makes sense to include so much lobster in the book, so many crab and oyster recipes. Those two words inform the images, too. The food photos are overflowing with color and abundance, from the recipe images to the straight-from-the-farmers-market ingredient shots.

I suspect, though, that it’s the lifestyle images of Hayden herself that must be super appealing to her audience. She’s young and beautiful, and the world is saturated, sunny, and gorgeous. Everything is covered in a sheen of wealth. It’s aspirational times 10.

We may not live in a time when most women in their 20s (or, um, any other decade) have the money and bandwidth to make everyday luxury and elevated entertaining a reality. But, it sure is lovely to think about. And, I bet we all have our own aspirational cookbooks. At least I do. I want to live in the worlds of Mostly French, A Year at Catbird Cottage, and Company⁴.

The Audience Connection

At the end of May,

Emily Sundberg

wrote about Hayden’s book tour in her business Substack Feed Me. The post was headlined Reinventing the Book Tour with Wishbone Kitchen. (Apologies if some of this post is behind a paywall; I’m a subscriber so can’t tell where the free portion cuts off.) The gist is that Hayden brought a popular trivia host with her to ticketed stops on her book tour in an effort to make the events more fun and more interactive. Here is Hayden in that Feed Me post:

Ten or twenty years ago, these talks were the first time the audience was hearing directly from an author. But my audience already knows me, my dogs, my past jobs, my favorite foods, my favorite pair of jeans, and even my mental health struggles. In lieu of the typical book tour, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to, for lack of a better word, yap with my audience.

Hayden went on to say that she knew the people attending her events already had her book. But she wanted them to have so much fun that they bought a second book. Judging by her sales figures, many of them did.

To wrap up what turned out to be a much longer than expected newsletter—I like this book. It is not generic; there is a point of view, and I enjoyed most of the recipes. I don’t know how many of the The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook’s buyers are cooking from it, but I doubt they’ll be disappointed if they do.

Here’s my wish: even if this is a first cookbook for most of Hayden’s fans, it won’t be their last. Hopefully, like us, they’ll be bitten by the cookbook bug and discover just how satisfying having a library of these titles can be.

Thanks for reading! Have you read or cooked from The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook? If so, what do you think? Thoughts on influencer cookbooks? What are your aspirational cookbooks?

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1. My culinary school experience was similar: I went to ICE at night while working my day job at a documentary production company. I also had a one year-old, making life extra challenging. But this isn’t a competition, and thank goodness for that. If it was, Hayden is obviously the winner, lol.

2. Hayden comes by her lobster and seafood love naturally, having spent lots of time in Nantucket and the Hamptons.

3. My prediction for the inevitable follow-up: Wishbone Kitchen Simple or Wishbone Kitchen Weeknights

4. Clearly my food fantasies skew more to quiet country settings, not throwing parties in the Hamptons. I have never felt more in my 40s.