Pickles, Illustrated: A Cookbook of 36 Recipes and Briny Miscellany

 

Pickles, Illustrated is a well written, attractively presented, niche collection of recipes and miscellanea featuring sweet and savory twists on pickled foods by Karen Solomon. Due out 16th Sept 2025 from Chronicle Books, it's 152 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats. 

The book has a friendly, funky, retro graphic vibe which suits the slightly offbeat focus, to put pickles in the brinelight (see what I did there?). It's full of tasty recipes which, if they aren't instant classics, will definitely be a hit with pickle fanatics. The author has developed and included some unexpectedly adventurous recipes which will either delight or perplex readers (or a bit of both?) such as scorched red peppers and celery (interesting!). There are some classics included as well, such as her take on pub (Branston) English pickle.

The recipes utilize ingredients which will mostly be readily available in any well stocked grocery store in North America - however some feature ingredients (asafetida) which will require specialist retailers, probably online; not prohibitively rare, but requiring some planning for readers who live outside NYC or LA. They're arranged in the book thematically by flavor profile: sour-ish, savory-ish, sweet-ish, and spicy-ish. 

Each recipe includes a description/intro, yields, ingredients written into the recipe (no bullet list), and step-by-step prep directions. Ingredient measures are given in imperial (American) units with metric in parentheses (yay!). There is no nutritional info provided.

It's got a bouncy, fun, young, foodie vibe, and the author is very open and chatty (in a good way). It's a small collection, but every one of the recipes, even the simpler ones, definitely have some *pow* factor.

There is no photography included (the colorful illustrations are by Alice Oehr) but since it's a book on pickles/side dishes, the lack of photography isn't an issue really.

Four stars. Really fun collection. It would make an excellent gift for a foodie friend, or for the home cook's library, as well as public or school library acquisition.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.