Seventy-five miles southeast of Washington, D.C., in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, accessible only by boat, is tiny Smith Island, where a 300-year-old culture has survived in singular isolation. For a quarter of a century in this unique setting, Frances Kitching operated a small, widely renowned restaurant and inn. Susan Stiles Dowell, working closely with her, gathered more than one hundred of her recipesmany of them from the generation-to-generation oral tradition. This is more than just a regional cookbook. In Mrs. Dowells sensitive and luminous telling of the lore and lure of this remote island, and in forty evocative photographs, colorful people and places come to life.

A Washington Post reporter looks at our culinary heritage, describes ethnic cookery and holiday menus around the country, and includes historical recipes.

Cakes have become an icon of American cultureand a window to understanding ourselves. Be they vanilla, lemon, ginger, chocolate, cinnamon, boozy, Bundt, layered, marbled, even checkerboard--they are etched in our psyche. Cakes relate to our lives, heritage, and hometowns. And as we look at the evolution of cakes in America, we see the evolution of our history: cakes changed with waves of immigrants landing on ourshores, with the availability (and scarcity) of ingredients, with cultural trends and with political developments. In her new book American Cake, Anne Byrn (creator of the New York Times bestselling series The Cake Mix Doctor) will explore this delicious evolution and teach us cake-making techniques from across the centuries, all modernized for today’s home cooks. Anne wonders (and answers for us) why devil’s food cake is not red in color, how the Southern delicacy known as Japanese Fruit Cake could be so-named when there appears to be nothing Japanese about the recipe, and how Depression-era cooks managed to bake cakes without eggs, milk, and butter. Who invented the flourless chocolate cake, the St. Louis gooey butter cake, the Tunnel of Fudge cake? Were these now-legendary recipes mishaps thanks to a lapse of memory, frugality, or being too lazy to run to the store for more flour? Join Anne for this delicious coast-to-coast journey and savor our nation's history of cake baking. From the dark, moist gingerbread and blueberry cakes of New England and the elegant English-style pound cake of Virginia to the hard-scrabble apple stack cake home to Appalachia and the slow-drawl, Deep South Lady Baltimore Cake, you will learn the stories behind your favorite cakes and how to bake them.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Celebrated food blogger and best-selling cookbook author Deb Perelman knows just the thing for a Tuesday night, or your most special occasion—from salads and slaws that make perfect side dishes (or a full meal) to savory tarts and galettes; from Mushroom Bourguignon to Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe. “Innovative, creative, and effortlessly funny." —Cooking Light Deb Perelman loves to cook. She isn’t a chef or a restaurant owner—she’s never even waitressed. Cooking in her tiny Manhattan kitchen was, at least at first, for special occasions—and, too often, an unnecessarily daunting venture. Deb found herself overwhelmed by the number of recipes available to her. Have you ever searched for the perfect birthday cake on Google? You’ll get more than three million results. Where do you start? What if you pick a recipe that’s downright bad? With the same warmth, candor, and can-do spirit her award-winning blog, Smitten Kitchen, is known for, here Deb presents more than 100 recipes—almost entirely new, plus a few favorites from the site—that guarantee delicious results every time. Gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of her beautiful color photographs, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is all about approachable, uncompromised home cooking. Here you’ll find better uses for your favorite vegetables: asparagus blanketing a pizza; ratatouille dressing up a sandwich; cauliflower masquerading as pesto. These are recipes you’ll bookmark and use so often they become your own, recipes you’ll slip to a friend who wants to impress her new in-laws, and recipes with simple ingredients that yield amazing results in a minimum amount of time. Deb tells you her favorite summer cocktail; how to lose your fear of cooking for a crowd; and the essential items you need for your own kitchen. From salads and slaws that make perfect side dishes (or a full meal) to savory tarts and galettes; from Mushroom Bourguignon to Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Cake, Deb knows just the thing for a Tuesday night, or your most special occasion. Look for Deb Perelman’s latest cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers!

An exploration into the culinary identity of eastern Europe through stunning food and travel photography, interspersed with stories and memories of tiny buildings called summer kitchens. In this new cookbook from award-winning author Olia Hercules, explore the diversity of Ukraine’s cuisine and heritage through the alluring window of summer kitchens—small structures alongside the main house where people cook and preserve summer fruits and vegetables for the winter months. Featuring 100 superb recipes, a gorgeous collection of food and lifestyle images, and evocative personal narrative, Hercules illustrates how the region’s cuisine varies as much as the landscapes, climate, and produce through her travels to the Carpathians, the Black Sea, the shores of the Danube and Dnieper, and her native land.

In B. Smith’s Southern Cooking A-Z, she explores the rich and diverse cuisines of the American South—from Cajun to creole, Soul food to “New Southern.” Laced with engaging anecdotes about culture and history, Smith’s recipes equal parts instructive and entertaining. Hers isn’t a cookbook for elaborate dinner parties or calorie counters, but rather a guide for those unafraid to smoke a pig and toss back a few sliders. From Smith’s mouthwatering catfish fingers to her Jambalaya, her Kentucky Burgoo, and the entertaining stories she tells while teaching you her tricks, B. Smith’s Southern Cooking A-Z will show even the most skeptical reader why the Wall Street Journal has hailed her as “One of the most formidable rivals of Martha Stewart.”