The School of Essential Ingredients

A Novel

NYT Bestseller — Indie Next Pick — Costco Pennie’s Pick — Community Reads programs

“We’re all just ingredients. What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal…”

Once a month on Monday night, eight students gather in Lillian’s restaurant kitchen for a cooking class. They come to learn the art behind Lillian’s dishes, but it soon becomes clear that each one unknowingly seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. One by one, they are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of what they create. Over time, the paths of the students intermingle and intertwine, and the essence of Lillian’s cooking expands beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of their lives, with results that are often unexpected and always delicious.

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Praise

“Food Network fans will devour this first novel about a whimsical cooking school run by a gentle chef with a fierce passion for food.”

— People Magazine

“If you judge a book, as I often do, by whether you’d like to spend time having lunch with its characters, you’re likely to decide that Bauermeister’s novel merits a three-course repast.”

— Independent Booksellers Pick Best Summer Reads, NPR

“As exquisitely prepared and satisfying as the dishes Lillian prepares in her restaurant.”

— Bookreporter

“A lush immersion in the smells, tastes and comradeship of the culinary world.”

— Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“When Lillian teaches her students that the most essential ingredient of all might be time, it feels as if the author has taken this to heart as well.”

— Bellingham Herald

“The School of Essential Ingredients is a delicate, meltingly lovely hymn to food and friendship. Lillian’s kitchen, full of buttery light and gorgeous smells, is a place where the world works the way it should. You’ll want to tuck yourself into one warm corner of it and stay all day.”

— Marisa de los Santos, author of Love Walked In and Belong To Me

“The perfect recipe for escaping from life’s stresses, from savoring the delicious ingredients of Lillian’s recipes to the calm and thoughtful rhythm of Erica Bauermeister’s luminous prose.”

— Kate Jacobs, author of The Friday Night Knitting Club