Laurel's Kitchen is a vegetarian cookbook by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey. It contributed to the rise of the vegetarian movement of the 1970s.

Background and influence

Carol Lee Flinders was a student of Eknath Easwaran, whose influence led to her interest in vegetarianism. She created the vegetarian cookbook Laurel's Kitchen (1976), with a few of his other students. Laurel's Kitchen had a strong impact on the natural foods movement within the American counterculture. A second edition, The New Laurel's Kitchen, was published in 1986. It had the same subtitle and the same first two authors, and Brian Ruppenthal was the new third author. The book has sold over a million copies. Laurel's Kitchen contained extensive nutritional information from a scientific point of view, and sold more than a million copies. In 1978, Yoga Journal contained two reviews of Laurel's Kitchen, by different authors. In 1994, the Vegetarian Times, a leading magazine for vegetarians, surveyed the most admired cookbooks among a "panel of cookbook authors, food editors, and chefs." The New Laurel's Kitchen was the "clear winner" for "best cookbook for beginners" (p. 107).

Scholarship

A book by Megan Elias (2008), published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, devoted 9 pages to analyzing the book and its place in American culture, contending that "Laurel's Kitchen was as much a lifestyle guide as it was a cookbook" (p. 153). A scholarly review stated that Elias "gives the renowned countercultural cookbook Laurel’s Kitchen its proper due in American history.... she sees Laurel Robertson and her comrades Carol Flinders and Bronwyn Godfrey struggling, in an intelligent and heartfelt way, against the manipulations of the market, which devalued nutritious food, meaningful domestic labor, and communal connections" (p. 417). A scholarly book by Mary Drake McFeely (2001) also spent several pages discussing Laurel's Kitchen, which it described as "the Fannie Farmer of vegetarian cooking" (p. 142).

Editions

Additional Laurel's Kitchen books

Several related books have been published by the same groups of authors. These books were based on a similar underlying philosophy, and also included the phrase "Laurel's Kitchen" in the title: