Making a cookbook: Food styling

Behind the cookbookery scenes, part 3

Hello! Hello!

This is Part 3 of my “Making a Cookbook” series and I’m talking about a very behind-the-scenes aspect of cookbookery, food styling, for which I have so much respect it borders on awe. It's an extremely complicated job. To be a food stylist is to be part cook and baker, part artist and part (very large part) tactical engineer. If you’re just jumping into the “Making A Cookbook” series, you might want to go back and take a look at Part 1, Recipe Testing, and Part 2, Food Photography.

When you see a picture of food in a magazine or in most cookbooks, you’re seeing the obvious part of the food stylist’s work. In simplistic terms, it’s the stylist’s job to make food and arrange it for the photographer to shoot it. But that food, the way the stylist makes it and the way it's arranged must, in the case of a cookbook, match the author’s spirit and vision and, of course, the recipes. Stylists have to know their way around food. But they've also got to have a battery of skills that …