All the Right Ingredients

Who doesn’t love an elegantly designed, well-thought-out cookbook? We sure do, especially when they combine how-to recipes with storytelling elements such as stunning photography and/or the detail-rich histories behind those recipes. Following are three recently published cookbooks, including one with deep local roots, to consider adding to the bookshelf. Brunch Season: A Year of Delicious Mornings from the Buttermilk Kitchen by Suzanne Vizethann contains more than 60 recipes sure to liven up the meal many people consider their favorite. Recipe examples include rhubarb cobbler, heirloom tomato toasts, and roasted squash oatmeal with crispy rosemary seeds. If Chef Vizethann’s name doesn’t ring a bell, her face might look familiar; she’s a Food Network Chopped champion, and her restaurant, Buttermilk Kitchen (locations in Atlanta and Camden, Maine), made the rounds on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives . The Gilded Age Christmas Cookbook: Cookies and Treats From America’s Golden Era by Becky Libourel Diamond delves into the confections that graced holiday tables during the latter part of the 19th century—cakes, pies, puddings, custards, and candies that, by and large, have long since disappeared from the culinary landscape. Diamond is a Yardley-based food writer, librarian, research historian whose prior works include The Thousand Dollar Dinner and Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School . She is currently working on a history of City Tavern, the Philadelphia restaurant that opened its doors in the 1770s and closed in 2020, an apparent casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chef Walter Staib, City Tavern’s former proprietor and chef, penned the foreword for The Gilded Age Christmas Cookbook . Authored by Sean Sherman, with Kate Nelson and Kristin Donnelly, Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America is a cookbook unlike any other. In Turtle Island, Chef Sherman, a three-time James Beard Award winner of Oglala Lakota descent, serves up 100-plus recipes. He also includes the stories behind many of the foods that link the natural environments, histories, and traditions of Indigenous peoples from across the continent. Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life, November 2025.