Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes – Through Darkness and Light

by Caroline Eden

This is the tale of a journey between three great cities -–  Odessa, built on a dream by Catherine the Great, through Istanbul, the fulcrum balancing Europe and Asia and on to tough, stoic, lyrical Trabzon.

With a nose for a good recipe and an ear for an extraordinary story, Caroline Eden travels from Odessa to Bessarabia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey's Black Sea region, exploring interconnecting culinary cultures. From the Jewish table of Odessa, to meeting the last fisherwoman of Bulgaria and charting the legacies of the White Russian émigrés in Istanbul, Caroline gives readers a unique insight into a part of the world that is both shaded by darkness and illuminated by light.

Meticulously researched and documenting unprecedented meetings with remarkable individuals, Black Sea is like no other piece of travel writing. Packed with rich photography and sumptuous food, this biography of a region, its people and its recipes truly breaks new ground.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Nonfiction, Travel, Cooking, History, Ukraine

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Black Sea is a place of contrasts. Not only is it the focal point for a number of countries, but it is the meeting point of continents and a place where different cultures contrast and meld. To discover more about this place in the world Caroline Eden circumnavigates its coast.

The surf barely lapped the shore, making the Black Sea look a solid block of blue…

She travels from Odessa to Bessarabia, then to Romania, Bulgaria and onto Turkey. In each of the places she visits, she picks away at the history and culture and meets the people of that country across a table and on a plate. Memories are frequently formed when on holiday over meals and this is her eulogy to the region. It is a wonderful mix of travelogue and recipe book, adventures as she heads from city to city, restaurant to café, stopping at stalls to sample and purchase the fragrant foods on offer.

I have read a lot of cookery books in my time, and I can recommend this one for the prose and the food and the stunning images of the places and evocative photos of the food she ate on her journey. Also, this is a visually stunning book too, even before you have picked it up. The deep black cover with the silvered waves glisten and the black edges make this a book of contrasts, just like the place.

[Suzana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book - captivating and atmospheric. The author mentions Neal Ascherson's history book Black Sea several times as inspiration, and indeed, this travelogue/recipe book is the cherry (or, better yet, the sour cherry) on top of Ascherson's Black Sea. The chapter on Odessa is very well written, and it captures Istanbul beautifully. The chapter about Constanța/Romania only scratches the surface, but the recipes and atmosphere of the town are accurate and evocative. I would like to read more books like this one.

[Todayiamadaisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an odd book: a history, a travel guide, a history of travel guides, with occasional recipes thrown in. It's a series of essays more than an ongoing travelogue, following the coast of the Black Sea from Odessa to Istanbul to Trabzon. It's a beautiful book, as an object and as a piece of writing, and I want to try some of the recipes. It's also a confusing book: the photos aren't captioned and the recipes aren't indexed and I never got a real sense of the writer.

[Erika Pensaert]

DNF

[Herb Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caroline Eden’s Black Sea is a spectacular guide to this fascinating region, and you can’t help but feel inspired to start planning your own journey there as you savor each page of this gorgeous book. There are recipes here, of course: showcases for ripe vegetables, savory pies, fish and seafood, simple soups and stews, sweets, and more. Great care has gone into adapting dishes the author experienced in her travels so that the reader can simply recreate similar tastes at home without having to track down exotic, hard-to-find ingredients.

It’s a mistake to think of Black Sea as just another cookbook, though. For our author is a journalist and travel writer, and each recipe is set in context in Ms. Eden’s lyrical descriptions of each unique place. The recipes, like the lush, evocative photos, are sprinkled throughout to enrich the narrative of the journey.

And what a journey! We begin in Odessa, in southern Ukraine. Ms. Eden has perfectly captured its charm, faded elegance, its crazy patchwork quilt of different peoples and cultures and unique history that have always made this city something apart from whatever empire or country it belonged to throughout the centuries.

Black Sea then takes us overland to the Bessarabian region, the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, into Istanbul, and finally to Trabzon, in the far northeastern corner of Turkey. Along the way, Ms. Eden meets an incredible and unlikely cast of characters, and here her talents as a journalist really shine. Her conversations with and observations of the people who live on the Black Sea are what linger in the mind long after you put the book down.

Black Sea is that rarest of books that can gracefully adorn your coffee table, keep you spellbound as you read it from introduction to end, and guide you in the kitchen to experience some new dishes that may become your favorites. Highest recommendation!

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Dayna summed this up perfectly as a mesmerizing combination of elements - I'll add that in addition to the art, recipes and travelogue, there's some fascinating cultural and literary history. Odessa in the late 19th century was where it was at.
The blurb says the book is about three cities around the Black Sea, but actually there are closer to a dozen – I would say the most compelling are Safranbolu, Varna and, of course, Odessa. Overall a win for me - I added three books to my to-read list that the author referenced, I've bookmarked three recipes to try, and I've decided to use the word "louche" a lot more.

[Marijn Schafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een boek dat enorm inspireert! Ik krijg zin om te reizen, zin om te koken en zin om meer te lezen over de zwarte zee regio.
Dit boek is zowel een kookboek als het verslag van een reis van Odessa (Oekraïne) naar Trabzon (Turkije). Van elke plaats die Caroline Eden bezoekt vertelt ze iets over de geschiedenis, architectuur en restaurants.

[Jacek Marchwicki]

Niezwykle pobudzająca wyobraźnie, barwna seria esejów i przepisów - fenomenalna struktura książki. Pare wybitnych fragmentów, do których niewątpliwie będę wracał. Chwała Pani Eden za poszukiwanie spoiwa i zarysu wspólnej kultury basenu Morza Czarnego.

Niestety, kultura dla autorki wydaje się składać wyłącznie z zamierzchłej historii i gastronomii. Oba te elementy, niezwykle ważne, wydają się zostawiać mnóstwo dziur, które należałoby wypełnić wnikliwszym spojrzeniem na codzienność bohaterów i "bohaterów" (miast), którego ogromnie tu zabrakło.

Autorka szuka wspólnoty kulturowej Morza Czarnego po historii emigracji, wzajemnych wpływów i konfliktów, rozpisując się o duchu nostalgii, przemijania i "lepszych czasach", a zapomina o krytycznym spojrzeniu na siebie jako turystkę i w konsekwencji o tym, że to, co dla niej jest historyczne, nostalgiczne i skansenowe, to codzienność dla ludzi, którzy ten świat współcześnie zamieszkują i to oni, nie duchy, powinni śpiewać pierwszy głos.

Świetne przepisy tho, piękne zdjęcia, fenomenalne wydanie (!!!) i bardzo lekko się to czyta.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a cookbook, I love this: the stories made me so excited to try the recipes. Eden makes the food of the region come alive. The things I've tried so far have been lovely. As far as travel writing goes - eh, it's good but does not stand out. I agree with other reviewers that it would've been nice if Eden had inserted just a bit more of herself into the writing, but she is excellent at evoking an atmosphere, and the recipes/focus on food really really add to this. All in all, a charming reading experience, looking forwards to Red Sand.

[Melody Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is physically beautiful - there is silver and blue foil on the cover, it has decorated page edges, the pictures are compelling. It's about things that interest me - a collection of essays about travel and recipes to go along with them. However, I just couldn't get interested in it. And of all the recipes included (maybe 40 or so), there was only one I found compelling enough to mark it to make.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book, wish there was more of her personal experience to go with yhe gorgeous photos and tasty recipes. T

[J.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utter delight, from the wavy textured cover to the thick paper and high-quality photographs of locations and foods, the essays on Odessa, Istanbul, Trabzon, and all points in between, to the recommended reading list in the back. A glorious travelogue, cookbook, and art book all in one!

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes by Caroline Eden really hits my sweet spot.

*I love a unique destination. Following the perimeter of the Black Sea through Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey from Istanbul to the Georgian border is certainly unique.

*I love just enough history. Her highlights had me reaching for Wikipedia to dive just a little deeper. I especially loved when she highlighted ethnic, religious, or exile groups.

*Recommendations for further reading area always a plus for me. I downloaded the BBC's The Compass On the Black Sea podcast covering the region. Bought Odessa Tales and William Blacker's Along the Enchanted Way about living in rural Romania. I'll be reading books by Freya Stark and Rose Macaulay as well.

*Descriptive architecture. I had to look up the really old homes she described in Turkey. Beautiful.

*Gorgeous photographs. The photographs captured life in motion and delicious recipes. I wish I could turn those photographs into postcards.

*Recipes! Yum! I'm asking for this book for Christmas so that I have time to make many of the recipes listed in this book.

*Eden dedicated one or more essays for each place she stopped along the way. I liked the concise essay versus a long book of chapters. Just a glimpse is all you need.

*The book itself is a work of art. Essays, recipes, beautiful photos. The layout with the maps showing her progress. The paper itself was a pleasure to touch - more cardstock than text weight.

Nicely done. I've already requested her Samarkand.

[Weatherly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, I really loved this one. I will admit, the later half of the book didn't have me as hooked as the beginning. It felt a little like the author lost excitement, but maybe that's me projecting. Or maybe it's just that she traveled more towards a less-touristy, more slightly desolate part of the Black Sea region towards the end of her travels.
It was extremely good, though. The atmosphere is dark and moody, the recipes look incredible, the pictures are AMAZING, and the design. Gosh oh gee. The design is my favorite part of this entire book. It was just beautifully thought out, from the font to the cover to the colors and layout, it just works.

Some of the essays are great, some of the essays are just ok, and some I could feel my eyes glazing over while reading them, but overall I really enjoyed this, and it was very different from the other foodie books I've read. Definitely going to dive further into the "foodie travels" genre in the future.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could give different ratings for different categories.

For visual layout, photography, and general flow, this book gets a 5. It is gorgeous, atmospheric, both a good coffee table book and an in-depth look at the cultures and people surrounding the Black Sea. You can tell there is a lot of love and time put into it.

For general content, though, the book gets probably a 2 or 3, because the essays felt all very piecemeal and disjointed. I think what it was missing was really the author's personality: I didn't know the person I was traveling with, and that matters in travel books. The recipes were really hard to follow and I skipped over them because they had ingredients that are impossible to buy in the West.

[Dayna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part art book, travelogue and cook book, this is a mesmerizing combination of elements. It reflects the way I love to explore a new area and is the perfect armchair travel for these COVID times. Now I really want to go to this region.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is much to enjoy in this journey. Though the book has a few minor flaws—I caught Eden’s language trapped in hot house prose once in Odessa, and found she got a fact or two wrong in Turkey—the vast majority of this book is an adventure illustrated with carefully chiseled prose, great photos, and recipes that arise so naturally out of the stories she tells about the places and people she meets, I couldn’t help but want to start cooking.
Having lived in Istanbul 18 years, I feel I can comment on her ability to both recognize she is a traveler, a food writer from Britain, while on the other hand creating lovely, short vignettes of the people she met and the places she visited. Though not on the level of Freya Stark, Colin Thubron or Gertrude Bell, that wasn’t her goal so it’s an unfair comparison. Eden is a fine writer and knows what sort of research she needs to do to create a satisfying literary and culinary repast. My greatest disappointment was this book ends at the Turkish / Georgian border, and Georgia is renowned for its food and wine. Hopefully at some point she can expand this work to include Georgia, Abkhazia, and Russia.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up. I’m not sure I knew what to make of this book as I checked it out, was reading it, and now having finished it and am reviewing it, I still stand by that confusion. Is it history, a travel guide, a cookbook? Yes to all 3 and no to all 3. Other reviewers mentioned there being no captions under the pictures and that, too, threw me. Same with there not always being pictures of the recipes themselves. I have very little context with any of the cuisines presented in this book, so being able to see the end product would be super beneficial.

Net/net, it was good, but I didn’t feel wowed by any of the stories or recipes included. I will say, however, that the author described my beloved home away from home, Reykjavik, in such a way that struck me so hard I had to highlight it. You may be thinking “why would a book about the Black Sea region even MENTION Reykjavik? The Vikings, maybe? But no, how does that make sense?”. I guess you need to read to find out. Or not.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part cookbook, part travelogue, part history lesson — from Odessa to Trabzon, Black Sea is the story of food writer Caroline Eden's overland culinary journey around the Black Sea.

First, this book is visually gorgeous. I enjoyed the photos and learning about the history of a number of these cities that sounded familiar (looking at you, Odessa) but about which I knew next to nothing. Many of the recipes sounded exotic and mouth-watering, though I admit I attempted none. I hadn't given thought previously to visiting the Black Sea region, but this beautiful book made me want to. I read this title to fulfill the Read Harder category "a food book about a cuisine you've never tried before."

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very different type of travel book about an area of the world, I hadn't thought of visiting. Caroline Eden's book is a mix of a regional and cultural history that are covered in different essays, photographs of these places, and recipes of different foods that she tries as she travels counterclockwise along the Black Sea coast from Odessa, Ukraine to Trabzon, Turkey, by way of Istanbul. The essays highlight the different cultural influences in the foods that she finds in different areas and local restaurants. The recipes show how these foods could be made in our own homes. The photography brings out the beauty of the places she travels. This is an in-depth look at this region through its food.

[Jc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part travelogue, part socio-political commentary, part cookbook, Caroline Eden’s Black Sea is a fascinating volume. If you have any historical interest in the peoples between Eastern Europe and Western Asia and their cultures, or if you are just hoping to expand your culinary horizons, this is a book for you. If this is your thing, you will hunger for more (figuratively and literally!) after exploring Eden’s Black Sea. Or, if you just are into beautiful books, skip all the above and just find a copy to admire—because aside from what I described already, this is an art book. Amazing photos on art-book quality stock. Fascinating to just explore the images. Be sure to look for the 2024 edition for some interesting updates.

[RUSA CODES · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eden’s gorgeously conceived and designed guide to the cuisine and culture of the lands surrounding the Black Sea is a multisensory immersion into place, a stirring and evocative mix of memoir, travel tale, history, literary gazetteer, and cookbook. It reads like the journal of an intrepid and knowledgeable adventurer obsessed with food and is such a pleasure to delve into that you might forget to stop reading and start cooking. Try the Black Sea Börek.
2020 CODES List Winners Announced

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four stars are for the subject matter, the pictures, the overall prettiness of this book on one's bookshelf, and the idea of the recipes. I say the idea of them because I haven't actually tried any, and I'm not likely to until I am more able to socialize with other people post-pandemic. Should such a time come. The essays were good but maybe not four stars good (I'm a hard grader). But it really is a beautiful book and I am so ready to hop on a plane to go to Trabzon. Maybe I should settle for a re-read of Tower of Trebizond.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't remember the last time I was so enthralled by a cookbook or a travel narrative. The quality of writing is outstanding. And the way the recipes are used to conjure up a sense of history, geography and atmosphere is ingenious.
Fuchsia Dunlop

The next best thing to actually travelling with Caroline Eden - a warm, erudite and greedy guide - is to read her. This is my kind of book.
Diana Henry


Packed with human stories as well as history, giving the recipes a significance and resonance.
Diana Henry, Sunday Telegraph

[Maineguide · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fascinating travelogue/recipe book by Caroline Eden. While I liked her “Red Sand” better—which covers the ‘stan countries—this still is interesting and worth reading. The recipes, for an area that, for me at least, does hold much culinary charm, were pretty good and I ended up saving many of them (Ms. Eden is very generous in sharing her recipes online). I enjoy her “concept”—weaving well written, journalistic essays (many about food) and recipes—so much that I’ve requested her first book, “Samarkand” through interlibrary loan.

[Selma June · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was gripped by this beautiful, atmospheric book and quickly consumed the entire body of work. Such a beautiful piece to have in the home as well as being captivating, historically informative, rich with local viewpoints and brimmed with simple, hearty recipes that will no doubt become a staple in our household. It was interesting reading this after visiting family in Trabzon and seeing the variation in recipes and customs. Will be trying it all. Loved learning more about the Jewish Italian roots of Odessa. So interesting!

[Yana Andreikova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection of travel stories and reworked local recipes, some of which you might even want to recreate. The pictures are great and help to feel the atmosphere nicely. What I really missed in this book is Georgia, but this is the problem of my expectations when I hear Black See. One more thing, author didn’t go to Russia, but keeps thinking and speaking about it all the time and everywhere she goes she’s searching for all tiny traces of Russian impact, at times it seemed too much to my taste. The edition itself is a masterpiece that at times saves the content.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this as much as Red Sands and I can't quite identify why. The writing was relaxing and competent, the stories were interesting, the photos were extremely pleasant to look at and the book was enjoyably tactile (though again not as much as Red Sands). Yet... Maybe it was due to so many recipes involving walnuts, which I am allergic to, or mixing sweet and savoury (which I'm not a fan of at all). Maybe I'm just not that interested in Türkiye.
I am going to try making a recipe from the book as I have a Bulgarian colleague who is going to take me to buy the correct cheese!

[Kate Parr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a lot of time for this kind of slightly rambling travelogue. I enjoy her voice and her adventurousness, though I noticed there was less personal connection for her in this volume compared to Red Sands. The photographs of both the food and people are evocative, and I've already had a crack at the Zelnik pie recipe. I'm very happy for her to lead me around the near east pointing things out, and I'll definitely read Samarkand as well.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ideal. It's travel memoir/history/food lore/recipes/good photography/literary hints...
There are so many recipes I've marked to try. The only (only) little thing I wish was that among the pictures, there were accompanying ones for each recipe. That helps me.
But otherwise, it's just a lovely book to refer to--for so many subjects. I wish I could go everywhere the author went.