Or to taste

Or To Taste is a collection of stories from 12 subjects recounting their favorite dishes. It is a 5.5″x8.5″x2″ black and white book containing transcribed interviews from the subjects, a series of photographs documenting the recreation of the dishes documented, and an accompanying recipe. Glossy color photographs of the dishes are tipped-in.

This project explores the role that printed form plays with personal narratives and challenges expectations of food-related print material. The book is small and compact, with stream-of-conscious style written records and inconsistencies with recipe details to capture the organic nature of food memory. The design of the content brings form to the recollections, for example using breaks in the text to represent changing in topic. The form of the book challenges the traditions in cookbook and food magazine design. By breaking long-standing rules of printed food-related matter, the stories and rituals documented through this project are able to be captured in a sensitive and nuanced form that sheds light on the precious nature of memory, culture, tradition, and taste.

Furthermore, the process for this project challenges the traditional role of design in the food industry, where narrative and accessibility is often prioritized over authenticity. The nuance of what “a pinch of salt” means to a father that’s making a sambal recipe that preserves and shares remnants of his culture in spite of genocide, or what “until it’s ready” means to a grandmother making a dumpling recipe she has memorized by heart is often erased with empirical measurements and testing. By capturing that uncertainty, this project ultimately serves as an artifact celebrating the ritual of food-making, rather than a tool to help towards recreating food.

This project was made possible in part by the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Microgrant #2025-034. Additional images can be found here.