Sunday, April 9, 2023

*Review* The Unofficial Princess Bride Cookbook


 Genre: Cookbook
Published: April 4, 2023
Pages: 160


With 50 food and drink recipes, The Unofficial Princess Bride Cookbook is perfect for fans who want to get a taste of the action along with some fun and interesting trivia.

There are few movies that can be easily identified by a single word or quote, let alone close to forty. From “As You Wish” and “Inconceivable” to “Have Fun Storming the Castle” and “My Name is Inigo Montoya,” 
The Princess Bride left an everlasting mark on pop culture.

In celebration of the movie’s 35th anniversary in 2022, 
The Unofficial Princess Bride Cookbook is the perfect book for fans of all its beloved characters, and the indelible quotes that have made it one of the most quoted movies of all time.

Some of the iconic recipes include:
 
  • Albino’s Pre-Torture Nourishment
  • MLT: Mutton, Lettuce, and Tomato
  • Shrieking Eel Pie
  • “The Tuna Fish Discrepancy”
  • Fezzik’s Restorative Stew
  • Four White Horses
  • “Mostly Dead” Corpse Reviver
  • And so many more!

Try out these iconic and fan-favorite recipes and relate to your favorite 
Princess Bride characters and story through food and trivia with The Unofficial Princess Bride Cookbook!


I received a copy of this book through Netgalley. This is my honest review. 

When I saw this book available on Netgalley I got so excited. Which is weird because while I enjoy The Princess Bride, I'm not a super-fan. The lines I can remember from the movie are "As you wish" and "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." and the latter I remember more because it's in meme's all over Facebook than from watching the movie. But I also like hosting themed dinners, and The Princess Bride seemed like a great theme, so that's what I did. And this book even makes that easy by offering like four or five dinner party meal plans at the end of the book. Foolish me, I didn't use any of those because as I was going through the cookbook, I found so many recipes I really wanted to try. I ended up having to cut three of them from my plans (an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert so at least it was equal) because I just ran out of time. 

My R.O.U.S before going in the oven.
I skipped the whiskers and eyes the recipe called
for because I needed to get it in the oven. 

The recipes were pretty straight forward and easy to follow, using a lot of fresh ingredients and herbs that I don't often cook with (for instance, I bought fresh sage and rosemary for the first time in my life for this meal). But they were more involved than I remembered from skimming them to plan my meal, which is why I had to cut things from the final meal plan. 

Gentle Giant's Gargantuan Gougeres

Finding the ingredients at the store was relatively simple though. A bit pricey because it uses some bougie ingredients compared to what I normally cook with, mostly the cheeses. Gruyere was heavily featured in the recipes I selected, but it's worth mentioning that once I started shredding it for the recipes, it went further than I anticipated while I was at the store. So if you're like me and don't usually cook with bougie cheeses, just know that those little bricks go pretty far. 

Life is Pain Pandemain

The cookbook does include photos for all of the recipes so you can see what the items are supposed to look like. None of mine look quite right, but I think with a little bit of practice on the recipes I could likely get there, because mine were fairly close considering. 

My R.O.U.S. lost it's nose in the baking process.

I also really enjoyed the trivia and tidbits shared at the beginning of each recipe, explaining what scenes they were connected with. Those helped me picture things a little bit better as I'm not a super-fan who has the movie memorized.

As You Wish Apple Tart. I certainly need
practice cutting letters out of crust.

There was only one recipe I made for the party that I didn't really enjoy, and that was more because of texture than anything else, and I intend to play with that recipe some on my own to see if I can't come up with a useable alternative that I find more palatable. 

Raspberry Pits of Despair. This was supposed
to use cherries, but I couldn't find any at
the store so I substituted raspberries. 

Overall I give this cookbook, 4.74 out of 5 stars and will absolutely be getting myself a copy so I can continue trying out the recipes. And I'll know in the future if I ever want to throw another Princess Bride dinner party (definitely possible) to use the suggested meal plans that are included to make the preparation a little less stressful for myself. - Katie 




Cassandra Reeder is an avid home cook and lifetime geek. For over a decade, she has been helping other geeks and nerds all over the world make their fictional food fantasies come true at geekychef.com. Cassandra extended this mission as the author of the Geeky Chef cookbook series, which includes: The Geeky Chef CookbookThe Geeky Chef Strikes BackThe Geeky Chef Drinks, and The Geeky Bartender Drinks. She is also the author of The Unofficial Princess Bride Cookbook. Cassandra currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

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