When Dr. Alessandra Pino and Ella Buchan, who had been friends for years, couldn't find a gothic cookbook they loved, they wrote their own. The result is A Gothic Cookbook: Hauntingly Delicious Recipes Inspired by 13 Classic Tales.
"I believe that the gothic is a reflection of all the anxieties that exist in society," Pino says, "so I think it's the perfect lens through which to view life, in general, and all the fears we may have as a collective humanity."
This recipe for candied chestnuts was inspired by Angela Carter's 1979 tale, "The Bloody Chamber." Photo courtesy of Andrews McMeel Publishing.
When you examine gothic novels through the lens of food, it can make you understand them in a different way, Pino explains. She cites a scene in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, after the unnamed heroine has just accepted a marriage proposal from Maxim de Winter. In what should be a happy moment, she dwells on the bitterness of the tangerine she's consuming.
"It tells you that maybe she's looking back and remembering something because she's not happy about the situation now or it's a clue to his character and something [being] not quite right underneath the seemingly perfect surface," Pino says.
"A Gothic Cookbook" explores how food manifests itself on the pages of Gothic literature. Photo courtesy of Andrews McMeel Publishing.