The Irish Kitchen

A boxed set of this book with its companion, The Irish Bakery, will be available for a limited time. Click here.

A generous and deeply evocative portrait of Irish cooking today, The Irish Kitchen builds on the success of The Irish Bakery with a broader, more wide-ranging collection of recipes, stories, and photographs. Drawing from kitchens across the island, Cherie Denham and photographer Andrew Montgomery—joined again by writer Kitty Corrigan—document the daily rhythms of home cooks, farmers, musicians, and craftspeople whose work is tied to the land, the sea, and tradition.

There are more than 90 recipes here, many with roots in home baking, but just as many that reflect the evolving landscape of Irish food and the ingredients available across seasons and regions. Among them:

• Boiled Irish tea cake—its dried fruit simmered in strong tea

• Crab claws with spiced dulse butter

• Beef shin soup with pearl barley

• Rack of lamb with rosemary-chive crust and homemade mint sauce

• Rhubarb crumble tartlets

• Treacle farls and soda breads cooked on a griddle

• Pickles, preserves, and jams for the Irish pantry

• Afternoon tea cakes and holiday bakes

The book is richly illustrated with full-page photography that brings kitchens and countryside into view, alongside essayistic profiles of figures like Patrick Gallagher, a turf cutter in County Mayo; Caoishe McLaughlin, a fiddler from Derry; and Deirdre Cronin, a dairy farmer in Cork.

What emerges is not just a collection of recipes, but a layered portrait of Irish domestic life—how food is shaped by place, memory, and community. It’s a book that honors tradition while showing how that tradition continues to change, one meal at a time.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. Measurements in metric.

"A great book: genuine, very well-judged and structured, with fabulous photographs. I actually like it even better than The Irish Bakery."  

—Diana Henry