A Gothic Cookbook

Some exciting news… The fabulous Leone Ross has agreed to write the foreword to A Gothic Cookbook.

Leone’s novel, This One Sky Day, was long-listed for the Women’s Prize For Fiction in 2022. Like much of her writing, it weaves magical realism with Gothic elements and the supernatural. More importantly, food is central to the plot.

There’s a troubled chef, a local delicacy featuring butterflies…

He spends months working on it.. Sacrificing his personal life. Shutting himself away from the outside world. Digging up body parts. Raiding morgues...

Grave-robbing aside, we're equally dedicated when it comes to getting this cookbook finished and out to you all. Unlike Victor Frankenstein, however, we won't bring to life a cobbled-together creature that makes us scream, flee in terror and become…

It's that time of year again; the days are crisper, the nights are chillier, and doorsteps are dotted with carved, candlelit pumpkins.

Halloween is creeping up with spindly, skeletal limbs, and we're using it as an excuse to do some final testing of our most cockle-warming recipes. Like our Cup of Stars, a cocktail inspired by The Haunting of Hill House – and Eleanor's over-active imagination as…

As the nights become as chilly as Dracula's draughty lair, we have a recipe to warm the cockles: Paprika Hendl, just like the one Jonathan Harker longed for Mina to recreate at home. It's one of the recipes that sparked the idea for our cookbook, and the very first that we developed and tested.

You can click on the recipe below and save as a jpeg. Think of it as a thank you for your support and…

We’ve been a bit quiet lately but, now that we’re very (very) close to reaching our target and releasing our monster into the wild, here’s a long overdue update.

The main motivation behind the book is our love of, and fascination with, Gothic literature in all its dark, complex and often indefinable glory, which is why it’s been tricky to narrow down the titles we’re covering. Some, such as…

This weekend marks 55 years since Rosemary's Baby was published. Ira Levin's terrifying tale depicted witchcraft and devilry creeping into the domestic realm in the most insidious manner, and food is one of the key ways it manifests itself.

We have a chapter dedicated to the role of food and drink in the novel, with recipes including a Chilean chupe – a fish stew baked with a cheesy breadcrumb…

It's been a while since our last update, so we thought we should let you know what we've been up to. So far, 2022 has been a flurry of perfecting our recipes, testing, tasting and testing again.

One of our chapters is dedicated to Toni Morrison's seminal ghost story, Beloved. The writer would have been 91 on February 18, and we've been celebrating her birthday by trying out some of the dishes inspired…

Hello everyone,

We know some of you have pledged – or might be thinking of pledging – for a copy of our spooky cookbook for the Gothic/food/literature lovers in your life, so we've designed a card that you can download and/or print as a symbol of your gift (just click on the image, below).

We've kept the wording simple so everyone can use it, though you can of course add your own message and…

Hello, and happy (nearly) Halloween!

We've put together a three-course menu as a little treat (no tricks here), with recipes for a starter, main and dessert from the cookbook, along with an aperitif from our vintage-style cocktail booklet.

Hopefully it will provide some spooky supper/dinner party inspiration, tide over those of you who are so patiently waiting for the book to come out, and give…

Spooky season is here at last! To celebrate, we'll be posting tricks and treats (mostly treats) every day, advent-style. There will be cooking tips, recipe inspiration, spooky facts, discount codes, videos and sneak peeks of what we're cooking/writing/drawing.

Our illustrator Lee has created this creepily brilliant (or brilliantly creepy) hand-drawn image to mark each day from 1-31. Follow us on…

Last night I dreamt I ate some gingerbread again...

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has so generously and enthusiastically supported our spooky cookbook. You've helped us to pass the halfway point in our crowdfunding and, with the nights drawing in and Halloween lurking in the shadows, the second half should hopefully be a relative breeze.

As a thank you for being so wonderful…

We've been rather busy this month, in the nicest possible way: researching 1930s recipe books and whisking, folding, whipping, griddling, baking our way to the perfect Manderley afternoon tea. It wasn't just an excuse to eat lots of cake and crumpets, of course. This was all in the name of celebrating Daphne du Maurier's evocative food descriptions for our chapter on Rebecca.

Alongside recipes…

Hello!

This week, while we've been writing, drawing and recipe testing as usual, our resident "Goth dog" Dolly has been patiently posing for this portrait to demonstrate our latest crowdfunding pledge level.

Each Gothic Pet Portrait will be hand-drawn from a photograph of your favourite animal by A Gothic Cookbook artist, Lee Henry, and printed on A3. 

This one is limited to just 10 pledges…

Hello everyone,

Just a note to say thank you to all of our supporters so far. We're not quite a month into funding and are close to a third of the way there, so hopefully it shouldn't be long until our beautifully illustrated cookbook goes into production.

The quicker we reach our funding target, the quicker you get your hands on the world's first comprehensive cookbook inspired by food in Gothic…

After a little over a week, A Gothic Cookbook is already one-fifth funded. We're thrilled that so many people "get" our proudly strange cookbook because, let's face it, it isn't exactly your traditional kitchen tome.

We've been busy testing recipes (time-consuming but, we'll admit, fun) including "Mrs Poole's Gin & Tonic Cake, AKA Bertha's Escape". We're also playing around with some Gothic cocktails…