The One Recipe Recipe Book: or, The Artist's Friend

Caroline Mack is a librarian in Beckenham, Kent, England.

As indicated by its subtitle, this book is written for poets, musicians,
dancers, and other artists who are living on a very limited budget.
Dunning’s guide to eating assumes a budget of $15 a week.

The recipes are meat-free, include very few packaged products, and are
based on staple foodstuffs such as rice, tofu, eggs, noodles, and olive
oil, together with a variety of vegetables and sauces. Despite the
book’s main title, from this set of basic ingredients Dunning
describes how to produce a variety of dishes. They are based primarily
on Chinese cooking and include stir-fried vegetables and rice, along
with the intriguingly named “cleansing soup” and “soothing soup”
(both recommended for breakfast).

The text is easy to read and enlivened by brightly colored sketches of
the ingredients. The recipes may appeal not just to impoverished artists
but to anyone who is interested in combining a simple, healthy diet with
unusual ingredients such as fried Chinese mushrooms or black moss. By
treating cookery as part of a lifestyle, this offbeat book makes a
refreshing change from more traditional cookbooks.