17 Essential Cookbooks By Black Chefs And Authors

Thomas Jefferson is often credited with introducing French cuisine to America, but who were the people actually cooking these recipes? This is the question posed by activist and culinary journalist Toni Tipton-Martin in her raw collection of stories and recipes. By reviewing over 400 Black-authored cookbooks spanning from 1827 to present, Tipton-Martin highlights the influence and tradition of Black cooking in American and its oft-overlooked contribution to culinary history on a whole.

Tanya Holland’s West Oakland restaurant Brown Sugar Kitchen is more than just an eatery. The soul-food spot is a neighborhood watering hole where sharing food turns into making connections. From caramel layer cake with brown butter-caramel frosting to herbed mushroom spoon bread, the recipes Holland shares prove why her interpretation of soul food has become so important to the neighborhood.

Chef Lazarus Lynch’s cookbook reads like a love letter to his Guyanese mother and his father from Alabama. Inside, he shares the southern and Caribbean-inspired food he grew up with in his father’s restaurant. Come for the dulce de leche banana pudding and brown butter candy yam mash with goat cheese brülée—stay for Lynch’s vibrant voice and the brilliantly modern photography.

Culinary historian and cookbook author Jessica B. Harris collected more than 200 recipes for this tome—all from different nations in Africa, like flavorful chutney from the Swahili coast and Senegal’s popular Thiebou Dienn. Each paints a portrait as vivid and dimensional as the various cultures highlighted. This book serves as a great entry point for those unfamiliar with cuisine from the continent.

The Great British Bake Off fans will be familiar with Benjamina Ebuehi from the seventh season of the series. For those who don’t watch the show, this London-based baker won audiences and the judges over with her inventive flavor combinations—and now she’s sharing creative cake recipes like caramelized plantain upside-down cake, and a plum and black pepper cake for you to try at home.

In this James Beard Award–nominated book, Jerrelle Guy beautifully weaves together lush, visceral recipe descriptions with intrinsically related moments in her life—like the similarities between twisting together plaited dukkah bread and the braids she wore in her hair as a child. Plus, as a former vegan, the blogger behind Chocolate for Basil includes plenty of dietary alternatives.

Growing up, Jocelyn Delk Adams would regularly take the ten-hour ride from her childhood home in Chicago to Winona, MS, to see her grandmother, Big Mama. Adams recounts these sweet memories while sharing recipes for the delicious desserts they made together.

You don’t get nicknamed “the queen of Creole cuisine” for nothing. Dooky Chase is a New Orleans institution, and the woman behind the restaurant, Leah Chase, teaches you how to make the spot’s famous gumbo and turtle soup, among many other recipes.

This book explores the Black foodways in America and around the world by looking into the Black experience, offering delicious recipes, moving essays, and arresting artwork.

Did you know Maya Angelou wrote a cookbook? The Pulitzer Prize– and Presidential Medal of Freedom–winning poet recounts her path from her childhood in Stamps, AR, to becoming a world-traveling adult by way of her favorite recipes. Even if you never make a recipe from the book, it’s worth a read just for the book’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful prose.

American chef Edna Lewis, who passed away in 2006, is a culinary legend. She grew up in a Virginia farming community settled by formerly enslaved people (she was the granddaughter of one), and went on to espouse the use of fresh, local ingredients in her recipes. In here, you’ll find wild mushrooms in a spring salad and freshly picked blackberries in her summer cobbler.

You’ll almost always have to wait in line to get into Marcus Samuelsson’s bustling Harlem eatery. But with this cookbook, you can make the Ethiopian-born and Swedish-raised chef’s fried yardbird, corn and oyster soup, and Obama’s short ribs (yep, named after you know who) at home.

Soul food has a reputation for being super indulgent, which is why author Jenné Claiborne thought she would have to give up her favorite buttery, fried meals when she went vegan. Instead, she spent years rewriting soul food recipes with plant-based ingredients. The result: delicious eats like coconut collard salad and peach date BBQ jackfruit sliders.

Thirty-one million American adults live alone, author Klancy Miller points out, and they deserve the pleasure of cooking ornate, delicious meals even when it’s just for themselves. With recipes like smoked duck breast salad and spicy pork burger with coconut, Miller shares creative ideas one serving at a time.

Food justice activist Bryant Terry breaks down a style of veganism in this cookbook that’s not just meat substitutions, but whole food, plant-based recipes. You’ll learn the fundamentals of plant-forward cooking alongside gorgeous recipes.

Jamaica-based sisters and chefs Suzanne and Michelle Rousseau walk through the rich history of food in the Caribbean, combining traditional island dishes with new recipes of their own.

You likely know Carla as a delightful staple on a few of your favorite TV shows, but you’ll grow to know her even more (and believe me—to know her is to love her) through her 2013 cookbook, a personal tome filled with warmth and flavor.