Elder Scrolls. The Cookbook?
Elder Scrolls Official Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel
Cookbook Type: Fictional, Historical
Favourite Recipe: Nord Spices (pg. 23)
Favourite Page: Quick Meads (pg160-165)
Favourite Quote: “The famous black market substance known as moonsugar is a key ingredient in a majority of Khajiit cooking, and as a result they have developed a tolerance to amounts fo the stuff that would lay other races low” (pg. 11)
Rating: 2/5 Larousse Gastronomiques (📕📕)
Auntie Recipe loves a cookbook based on a fantastical world, and the Elder Scrolls Official Cookbook is no exception. But while I usually have some kind of connection to the fictional books I purchase, I have only ever logged about 3 hours in these games. Never the less, I was drawn to it for some unknown reason, I bought it, and here we are.
Chelsea Monroe-Cassel co-wrote A Feast of Ice and Fire, which is a cookbook based on Game of Thrones that I absolutely adore. This book stays true to that level of involved storytelling around the recipes themselves, each recipe starting with a description of it’s connection to the fictional world, however I didn’t find the recipes themselves as captivating. To be perfectly honest, they are just regular recipes. Scones, chowder, fondue, stewed apples. Its got quite a few pages dedicated to Mead, which is actually pretty fantastic.
The real gems in this book are the spice mixes. I think I made every one of them and they still get pulled from the spice cabinet when I’m cooking meat (especially game) or something that needs a mix of savoury sweetness. While A Feast of Ice and Fire heavily connects it’s readers to real-world medieval cooking, there wasn’t the same kind of connection in Elder Scrolls and it just focused on basic, sort of ‘learning to cook’, recipes.
I was very excited about the Water of Life recipe, which looked like a refreshing version of Radhi Devlukia Shetty’s CCR tea, from JoyFull. That was, until I saw it was made with vodka! I’ll stick to my tea.
If you’re a fan of the games, I’m sure you’d get a kick out of flipping through the book and reading the excerpts from the game’s cannon, but as a cookbook on it’s too much fantasy and not enough fan-tasty.
Get your copy here: The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook