3.5, rounding to 4- intensely thorough for the very specific subject it covers: European cookbooks from 1300-modern era. This very much felt like academic papers converted into books, which is what I've heard happens in the humanities side of academia (I'm a scientist by training). If you're ever curious about the grammar used when instructing how to cook something, or the way recipes are classified, or even how useful or useless the "gastronomic literature" category is, Notaker supplies research for you with extensive footnotes. Not exactly popular audience reading, but fascinating nonetheless.

I was a little irritated that it only covered European cookery books; however, given the density of information this would be a mighty tomb if it attempted to detail global cooking literature across seven centuries. The most interesting/easy to digest chapters are in the third section where the role of cookbooks in society as teaching method, art, gender role enforcement is discussed, but reading the first and second parts really give you a sense of how much goes into putting together a cookbook, much less books in general. I'm tickled to know there are researchers that examine the tenses and usage of nouns across time- always an expert for something! ( )