Recipe for Sleep

Episode 18: More Cozy Dessert Recipes to Drift Off To

Recipe for Sleep is a sleep and meditation podcast for those who love a warm and cozy kitchen. Put away anything you were doing, and snuggle deep into your sweet covers. It’s time once again to open up the butter-stained pages of 365 Desserts, and let Erin Brindley read each recipe to you, softly and sweetly, until you fall asleep. This cookbook from 1900 is full of whipped meringues and sherry-soaked sultanas, a perfect place to gently rest your mind if you find baking, or just thinking about baking, soothing.
 
If this podcast is helping you fall asleep, consider chipping in to keep it ad free by visiting Buy Me a Coffee.
 
And if you’re interested in reading Erin’s stories and recipes, visit her Substack.

Episode 17: Sleepy Sweet Recipes from 1900

Recipe for Sleep – A Sleepcast is a cozy place to put your thoughts when it’s time for your mind to rest. We’ve got a library full of very old cookbooks, 1850-1925, at our fingertips and we’re going to read each one to you, sweetly and slowly, one recipe at a time. Recipes are simultaneously full of beautiful imagery, (particularly for those of us who thrill in delicious food,) and soothingly dull. Host Erin Brindley’s gentle narration and the nostalgic allure of Victorian simplicity create a calming atmosphere that eases you into a restful sleep. A perfect way to quiet down your busy mind as sleep rises. Please use this podcast as a sleep podcast, or meditation podcast.
 
This week we read from the May and June Chapters of 365 Desserts: A Dessert for Every Day of the Year. The original text is here: 365 Desserts
 
If this podcast is helping you fall asleep, consider chipping in to keep it ad free by visiting Buy Me a Coffee.
 
And if you’re interested in reading Erin’s stories and recipes, visit her Substack.

Episode 16: Sleepy Spring Recipes from 365 Desserts

Tonight, Host Erin Brindley continues reading, softly and sweetly, from “365 Desserts: A Dessert for Every Day of the Year” from 1900. Each of these little narrative recipes reads like a little poem. Snuggle deep into your sweet covers. You’ve made it. To the cozy, quiet time of day, where all you have to do is listen to Erin read you old recipes until you fall asleep.
 
To read Erin’s own recipes and stories, (or listen to her read them in an audio version,) visit her Substack.
 
To support this sleepy podcast in staying ad-free, visit Erin’s Buy Me a Coffee.
 
You can find the original text here: 365 Desserts
 

Episode 15: Fall Asleep to Recipes that are like Little Poems

You’ve made it. To that cozy, quiet time of day, where there’s nothing to do but listen to Chef Erin Brindley read you old cookbooks until you fall asleep. Tonight, we jump back into 1887’s A Book of Cooking and Pastry. All you have to do is snuggle deep into your sweet covers, and listen to Erin read about Macroni in Crust Cups, Croquettes of Potatoes, and Fondus until you drift off to dreamland.
To read Erin’s own recipes and stories, (or listen to her read them in an audio version,) visit her Substack.
To support this sleepy podcast in staying ad-free, visit Buy Me a Coffee.
To find the original text of this cookbook, visit here.

Episode 14: A Book of Cooking and Pastry to Fall Asleep To

This is Recipe for Sleep, a podcast where we dust off very old cookbooks and let them lull us into dreamland. I’m Erin Brindley, a chef and storyteller. Tonight I’ll read from A Book of Cooking and Pastry from 1887. This is my favorite kind of old cookbook where the recipes are barely recipes at all, just tiny little narratives. It is written by C.F. Fau, a caterer and cooking teacher. It is a deeply practical, simple tome. I find this kind to be the most comforting.
The book is almost a hundred dense pages, so tonight we’ll get through his sections on butters, dumplings, sauces, and soups, as well as some general cooking advice. Next episode we’ll pick up where we left off, because I find this particular book so easy and delightful, and my motto for 2025 is the easy way is the way. (Which is certainly helping me sleep.) So I’ll read about half of A Book of Cooking and Pastry to you tonight, slowly and sweetly, with the hopes that your mind will have a place to settle and you can slip into dreamland.You can find the original text here.
You can find original recipes by Chef Erin Brindley here.
 

Episode 13: Bread Making and Bread Baking to fall asleep to.

This is Recipe for Sleep, a podcast where we dust off very old cookbooks and let them lull us into dreamland. Happy 2025, I’m so glad to be back in your ears after a short break for the holidays. I’m Erin Brindley, a chef and storyteller. If you’re new to the podcast, I read old cookbooks, mostly from the late 1800s and early 1900s, softly and sweetly until you fall asleep. I launched this drowsy little project in 2024, weekly, but in fits and starts.
We’re changing things a bit for 2025…we’ll have a new episode out every other Wednesday evening. This will give me more time to get more of my own recipes up on ThankSalt.com, and I’m brewing up another sleepy idea you’ll hear more about soon.
Meanwhile, I’m so excited to start this year with the humble and delightful Bread Making and Bread Baking by Minnie E. Brothers from 1915. This cookbook is perfect to fall asleep to…there are so many wonderful basic tips for baking, all perfectly practical for the home cook, cozy, and unsurprising.  She moves on to savory things, but I think tonight we’ll just get through her baking section. I feel like it’s been a bit since we just listened to baking recipes, and I find them the most soothing.
Here's the original text, which has some totally delightful graphics I encourage you to peek at when you’re not trying to sleep. For now, snuggle into your sweet covers and let the recipes of Minne E. Brothers send you to your dreams.

Episode 12: More Literary Yule Recipes for the Longest Nights

Recipe for Sleep is a podcast where we dust off very old cookbooks and let them lull us to dreamland. I’m Erin Brindley, a chef and storyteller, and I’ve got a library full of old recipe books from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and in this podcast I read them to you to give your mind an easy, sweet place to spend some time. And if you fall asleep mid-recipe, all the better. Tonight we’re tucking back in to 1906’s Books and My Food (With Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day in the Year).
I chose this book to get us through all the holiday season, (although I think it would take us all of January too to get through the whole thing,) because each recipe is coupled with a literary quote from an English author. It’s not always Dickens, but sometimes it is, and it’s just right for cold days and long nights. We left off in April last week, but I’m going to skip ahead to November. The recipes are cozier, and because we’re releasing this episode the week of the Winter Solstice, it feels right to hear about all the rich dishes and spiced wines.
Let’s open the worn cover of “Books and My Food,” and flip through the butter stained pages so we can begin in the middle.
And if you’d like to read the original text, you’ll find it here: Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Episode 11: More Sleepy Yule Recipes

Tonight we slide right back into “Books and My Food,” a curious cookbook that couples literary quotes and recipes. We started this book last week, in honor of the season, and the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, or Yule Book Flood, where families exchange books on Christmas Eve, and spend the rest of the evening reading together. So this whole month is our own cozy homage, with a cookbook inspired by literature. Luckily this book has 365 recipes, plenty to put us to sleep for the whole month.
The recipes are particularly poetic, which makes them the perfect thing to fall asleep to.
 
I hope you can snuggle in to this cozy tome.
 
Host: Erin Brindley
@recipeforsleep
 
And if you’d like to read the original text, you’ll find it here: Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Episode 10: Sleepy Yule Recipes

 
Recipe for Sleep is a podcast where I read you old cookbooks until you fall asleep, and for the rest of this holiday season we have a special theme. There is something so quiet and soothing about the idea of cozying up under a blanket on a dark night, reading silently with people you love, each in your own world but together.
As I was looking through all the old cookbooks, trying to find the perfect, seasonally themed one to read you to sleep, I found “Books and My Food”. A curious cookbook written by a pair of friends in 1904. There are 365 recipes, one for each day of the year, coupled with a literary quote, primarily from English authors like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. The recipes are barely recipes at all, and they read a little like poems.
We’ll spend the next few weeks in our own little English “jolabokaflod,” the Icelandic tradition of exchanging books on Christmas eve, and then spending the rest of the evening reading them.
So, turn the lights out, put away anything you were doing, and snuggle deep into your sweet covers.
There is a particularly long, meandering introduction in this book, so if you’re the sort that wants to get right to snoozing to recipes, you’ll find they begin at around minute six.
And if you’d like to read the original text, you’ll find it here: Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Episode 9 - Dreamy Dinners Part III: Holiday Menus

Recipe for Sleep is a podcast where I read to you from very old cookbooks until you fall asleep. The holiday season can be both a time of wonderful recipes, and sleepless nights. So this week we slide back into Fannie Farmer’s 1914 tome “What to have for dinner.” Two episodes in, and we still have eight more menus to go in the Family Dinner section. Tonight, in honor of the holiday season, I’m going to skip ahead to page 101 where we’ll begin Dinners for Occasions. How much has Thanksgiving changed in the last hundred and ten years? A little. There’s turkey, for sure, but the pie is mince instead of pumpkin. The theme that survives the centuries is a shocking amount of food…would we have it any other way?
So, turn the lights out, put away anything you were doing, and snuggle deep into your sweet covers. 
Hosted by Erin Brindley
Additional recipes and stories by Erin at ThankSalt.com
Original text here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000114596871&seq=136