Far from just giving us visually-stunning films like Midsommar, Hereditary and Moonlight, as well as dazzling shows like Euphoria to feast our eyes on, production company A24 are great at feeding our appetite for literature too. In the past months the studio have released a number of books — from scripts and BTS looks at the making of their hit shows and films, to a celebration of the film industry’s most bizarro merchandise, and even a selection of poetry by Val Kilmer (neat!). Now, they’ve stepped up the stan nourishment game with the release of their first ever cookbook, Horror Caviar, a creepy exploration of the role of food in the horror genre.
Released today, Horror Caviar features inventively creepy recipes and essays on the influence of food across horror movies; with contributions from chefs, writers, and food influencers. Author and essayist Carmen Maria Machado writes “Horror and the Refrigerator: Nine Theses”, Phyllis Ma, who you might know best as the mushroom queen, provides a recipe for Soy Mushroom Aspic (of course) inspired by the cult Japanese horror movie Matango.
There’s also plenty of A24 inspiration too — chef Laila Gohar provides a recipe for fish stew, inspired by The Witch; while pulling inspiration more widely, there’s an essay on the genre of Black vampire movies by Yasmina Price, a writer in the Departments of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies at Yale; and Lexie Smith — the bread artist — writes about Audition as inspiration for her recipe, Bone & Pork Dumplings with Black Angel Hair Pasta.
Spooky season might be over, but tbh, this is the perfect excuse to carry it over into the food-heavy holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Pumpkins and witches brew instead of turkey and mince pies? Why not!
