This is a physically lovely book that features food that hobbits would love, properly divided into their 7 meals of the day! (There is also an index in the back.)

Besides the recipes- all photographed, it has photographs of Shire-like places, pictures of the "source materials" and the story about how they were found, and lovely botanical illustrations.

The recipes themselves are based on British home cooking and look delicious- and mostly pretty easy. An exception is the brewing recipes, which require equipment and knowledge of basic brewing of beer and/or mead... but which look very intriguing! Brewing supply vendors ought to be able to supply some of the less-common ingredients for some other recipes, too, like the dried elderflowers.

All told, there are maybe 50 recipes here, and I am including the separate recipes for, say, piecrust and pie filling, dumplings to accompany the stew, etc. That's not a lot for a book that costs what this one does, but they are all enticing- and the book itself is lovely!

The notes say the recipes are based on historical ones from the 1890s in rural England.

Recommended for cooks who are LotR fans, or interested in fairly accessible historic recipes. ( )