‘With its union of practicality and magic, a kitchen is a portal offering extended range and providing unlikely paths out of the ordinary. Offering opportunities to cook, imagine and create ways back into other times, other lives and other territories. Central Asia, Türkiye, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Russia, the Baltics and Poland. Places that have eased into my marrow over the years shaping my life, writing and thinking. They are here, these lands I return to, in this kitchen.’

A welcoming refuge with its tempting pantry, shelves of books and inquisitive dog, Caroline Eden finds comfort away from the road in her basement Edinburgh kitchen. Join her as she cooks recipes from her travels, reflects on past adventures and contemplates the kitchen’s unique ability to tell human stories. This is a hauntingly honest, and at times heartbreaking, memoir with the smell, taste and preparation of food at its heart.

From late night baking as a route back to Ukraine to capturing the beauty of Uzbek porcelain, and from the troublesome nature of food and art in Poland to the magic of cloudberries, Cold Kitchen celebrates the importance of curiosity and of feeling at home in the world.

“A unique memoir to savour by an explorer of our time. Eden’s
cultural and culinary map takes us into a wonderfully rich world.” ― Lyce Doucet

“Caroline Eden’s Cold Kitchen (Bloomsbury), which thinks about food and appetite and cooking in all the right ways and none of the wrong ones. Like any good book about the domestic arts, Cold Kitchen is a sermon against despair, despite/because of the author’s familiarity with places of war.” – Sarah Moss, TLS Books of the Year

“A quiet and beautiful book, a unique blend of history, place, love, food and belonging. Eden writes so sincerely and so intimately you miss her as soon as you’ve read the last page.” ― Diana Henry

“Powerfully evocative and beautifully written Cold Kitchen will warm your heart. Curl up with this book and let it gently take you places near and far; you will find a sense of home, the hearthstone of our shared humanity.” ― Elif Shafak

“A hugely accomplished work that manages to be wildly enjoyable, often moving and always thoughtful.” ― Olivia Potts, The Spectator