Four cookbooks to travel to Europe this summer

How to travel to Turkey, Italy, Greece, and the Basque Country through recipes

I had never been to Provence before, but I had an accurate expectation of what I would find in its markets in the summer: the spiced smell of ripe cantaloupes and the heady aroma of basil were already in my nostrils well before I set foot in that Provençal square crammed with fruit and vegetable stalls. I had pored over Elizabeth David’s cookbooks for months, I had traveled thanks to her words in space and time, I had been to provincial France and the Mediterranean shores, to the muddy English countryside, and foregone Italian kitchens.

I traveled through recipes, flavors, and stories well before I had the chance to visit those countries. Cookbooks also became the best souvenir to bring back home from a trip, a testament to my desire to keep the memories of a place alive, first and foremost on my tongue.

While Social Media are inundated by photos and videos of people having their best time while on holidays in remote countries and Mediterranean locations, I seek refuge in my cookbooks to travel once again through the chiseled words of my favorite food writers.

Today, below the fold, I’m sharing with you four cookbooks—plus one—to travel to Europe this summer through food: Turkey, Italy, Greece, and the Basque Country.

Let me know in the comments if you have ever encountered a cookbook that made you travel in space, or even in time, and experience a country and its people through its flavors and recipes even before you had the chance to visit it. Or if you fell in love with a place and found the perfect cookbook to conjure out of thin air the same authentic experience—the exact taste, or flavor combination—once back home.