Cookbook Review: The Elder Scrolls Cookbook Volume 2

This post contains affiliate links. If you click one and make a purchase, I earn a small commission, and you earn my gratitude. It’s thanks to folks like you that I don’t need to put ads on this blog to keep it going!

One of my most popular posts on this blog is my review of Volume 1 of the Official Elder Scrolls Cookbook. It’s also one of my favorite cookbooks on my shelf, and several recipes in it have become staples in my household. That’s why, when Volume 2 was announced, I was very excited to pick it up, and I preordered it immediately.

Well, The Official Elder Scrolls Cookbook Volume 2 (Tastes and Tales of Tamriel, #ad) finally arrived, and I have a lot to say about it. Let’s get started!

About the Book

First up, I want to talk a bit about the book as a whole. Immediate first impressions are great. It’s a gorgeous hardcover, with nice, thick pages of glossy photographs and clear recipes, organized by type of dish. Each chapter is preceded by some fiction of a culinary explorer and in-universe author of the book itself, and their adventures across the Elder Scrolls universe. It’s fluff, but it’s entertaining fluff. Every recipe also has a block of fluff about it, to add a little bit more world building and entertainment to the book.

Before we dig into the recipes and my thoughts, it’s important to know that the author of Volume 2 and the author of Volume 1 are different. Volume 1 is written by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, while Volume 2 was written by Victoria Rosenthal. Victoria has written quite a few other popular culture cookbooks, including the Magic the Gathering, Fallout, and Pokemon cookbooks. You can see the full list of cookbooks she’s written on her author page on Amazon.

My review of the book mostly focuses on the recipes, but I wanted to note the production value of the book as well before I dig in.

Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so it makes sense that the cookbook starts off with it. There are ten recipes in this section, ranging from fairly simple to strangely complex.

• Arenthia’s Empty Tankard Frittata – An egg and potato frittata cooked in cast iron.
• Bubble and Squeak – A potato fritter with duck bacon and cabbage.
• Fungus Omelet – A pretty basic omelet with sauteed mushrooms.
• Kwama Hash – A spiced hash made with sweet potatoes and carrots, with duck eggs cooked inside.
• Old Aldmeri Orphan Gruel – A pearl barley porridge with pumpkin puree, spices, and a topping of nuts, seeds, and dried fruit.
• Pear Sweetcakes – Spiced pear scones.
• Solitude Full Breakfast – A twist on the Full English Breakfast with eggs, salmon spread, roast veggies, baked beans, and a handful of other items.
• Toad Muffins – No, no toads in this; it’s basically single-serve Toad in the Hole.
• Orzorga’s Tripe Trifle Pocket – A pastry stuffed with chicken gizzards, mushrooms, scallions, and spices.
• Rajhin’s Sugar Claws – A crescent pastry filled with sesame and spices, and glazed with simple icing.

This already gives you a pretty good impression of what the book has in store for you. A lot of recipes, many of which have a moderate to heavy British influence, and some of which are incredibly complex. Some just have a lot going on, a couple have you making certain items from scratch that add a lot of work to the full recipe, and some are just simple.

So far, I’ve made the fungus omelet, and it’s fine. It’s a little bland, since there’s nothing to it other than egg and mushroom, but it’s tasty enough for what it is. I’d personally add some kind of melty white cheese to the mushrooms, myself.

Appetizers

This section has nine recipes, mostly focusing on smaller dishes to serve before the main courses. They run the gamut from relatively simple and vegetarian to more complex in many ways.

• Alik’r Beets with Goat Cheese – Stacked slices of beets separated by herbed goat cheese and topped with watercress.
• Falinesti Forbidden Fruit – A strange salad of spinach and arugula, watermelon, olives, radishes, onion, mint, and feta with a vinegar dressing.
• Gold Coast Mudcrab Fries – Hand-made crab and potato croquettes breaded and fried, with an equally hand-made melon and jalapeno dipping sauce.
• Kollopi – Wild boar meatballs in a homemade gravy.
• Caramelized Goat Nibbles – Skewers of goat, tomato, bell pepper, and onion.
• Troll Fat Jerky – Five-spice duck jerky made in the oven.
• Elsweyr Corn Fritters – Corn, onion, and cheese fritters with a grape and sour cream dipping sauce.
• Singing Tuber Salad – Since Nirnroot isn’t real, this is a beet salad with a homemade vinaigrette.
• The Hound and Rat – Individual muffin pockets of pastry stuffed with cheese and spiced lamb.

Other than the strange watermelon salad, these are mostly fine. The crab croquettes are listed as one of the most difficult recipes in the book according to a chart in the back, but I tend to disagree.

I will say, the “troll” jerky is both tasty and easier to make than I would have thought jerky would be. I don’t know why I thought it was more work, but I guess the hard part is just getting the flavors right.

Bread

I don’t know why bread comes after appetizers, or even, really, why it gets its own section. There are both dessert breads like banana bread and more normal breads in this section, so it feels like it would have been better either divided up or arranged in a different way.

• Combwort Flatbread – A fairly standard focaccia with rosemary and cherry tomatoes.
• Minstrel Banana Bread – A nut-free banana bread spiced with cardamom. In-game it’s supposed to be Mistral, though.
• Savory Thorn Cornbread – A homemade cheddar cornbread laced with bacon and jalapenos.
• Solitude Bread – A “basic” white bread using a poolish base, sort of like a fast sourdough.
• Vvardenfell Ash Yam Loaf – A sweet potato bread with a soft crumb and egg washed top.
• Candied Nectar Bread – A simple white bread packed with dried fruit and spices.

Personally, I think I might have moved the banana bread and the nectar bread to a more dessert-focused section, but since it would leave this section a little light compared to the rest, I can see why it was arranged the way it was.

I made the banana bread, because I do love banana bread. This is a perfectly good, if basic, recipe. Since the only spice is cardamom, and there aren’t any mix-ins like chocolate chips or nuts, it’s not the most complex banana bread I’ve ever had, but it’s tasty.

Soups and Stews

One of the longest sections with eleven recipes, these also range from simple to strangely complicated. Several of them also call for exotic ingredients while giving much more common substitutions, and I’m really not sure what benefit the exotic ingredients bring to the table. A couple of the recipes also call for a broth found later in the same section. I liked Volume 1’s “The Basics” section for these kinds of referenced recipes a lot more, honestly.

• Argonian Pumpkin Stew – A pureed soup made with butternut squash and kabocha, a Japanese pumpkin.
• Artaeum Takeaway Broth – A broth made with nonspecified white fish bones and heads and a handful of seafood additions. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered fish broth before.
• Cloudy Dregs Inn Bouillabaisse – Crab, shrimp, clams, cod, and lobster, cooked in a broth. Kind of a lot!
• Elsweyr Hearty Noodles – A duck leg soup in a broth with noodles and veggies; it reminds me of a simpler version of the Thanksgiving duck ramen I make every year.
• Hunt-Wife’s Beef Radish Stew – Beef short rib stew using broth from later.
• Lava Foot Soup and Saltrice – A soup made with veg, rice, sweet potatoes, and a broth made earlier in the recipe itself instead of pulled out as another broth recipe.
• Mutton Stew – Exactly what it sounds like; a lamb stew with sweet potatoes and plenty of spices. This also uses the broth from later.
• Pack Leader’s Bone Broth – The broth both of those previous recipes use. Pretty much just a beef broth, but with chicken feet.
• Shornhelm Oxtail Soup – Oxtail soup. It also uses the bone broth as a base. I’m not to keen on oxtails myself.
• Solitude Salmon-Millet Soup – A fish soup made with salmon and potatoes with some millet and the takeaway broth from earlier.
• West Weald Corn Chowder – A very simple corn and potato chowder. Props to the producers for photographing this without making it look distasteful.

Overall, I think this is the weakest section, and the one that most suffers from not having a “the basics” section to put those broths in. I’m not the kind of person to consider a broth on its own to be a soup, so it feels weird especially for the fish broth to be a recipe on its own and also used in one other recipe, while another recipe has you make a broth from scratch as part of its preparation.

I will say, the duck and noodle soup is quite tasty, and the broth is both easy to make and something I can see making for other purposes as well. I enjoyed it!

Entrees

While you would think the entree section would be the largest, it’s actually not. It does have some of the largest dishes, though, including some I’m not sure I could make even if I wanted to.

• Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl – A poke bowl with quinoa instead of rice.
• Orcish Bratwurst on Bun – Beer brats with homemade red cabbage sweet sauerkraut.
• Peacock Confit – Duck legs cooked in several cups of duck fat.
• Roast Branzino – A whole roast fish. What’s a Branzino? I have no idea, and I’m pretty sure I can’t get it anywhere nearby.
• Garlic and Pepper Venison Steak – Marinaded venison steaks with veg, served over rice. Much more my speed.
• Pheasant Roast – A whole roast pheasant. A fairly typical recipe for a small-ish bird.
• Port Hunding Cheese Fries – Poutine with a whole broth you make out of lamb and use the pack leader broth from earlier, just to make the gravy.
• Senchal Curry Fish and Rice – Cod cooked in a turmeric-chili paste alongside mushrooms and other veg.
• Stonetooth Bash Chicken – Spatchcocked and grilled whole chicken.

Overall this section is a little stronger but there are a few odd choices. On one hand, a whole pheasant; on the other hand, the only recipe in the book that features chicken instead of duck. A whole roast fish? I don’t live on a coast, Victoria, I’m not sure I’d trust one if I got one. And duck confit just seems excessive.

I made the bratwurst recipe and have a bit of a problem, which is that the scale is way off. The recipe whips up a frankly immense amount of cabbage slaw. It’s tasty! It’s just enough for probably 20 brats, not the four it calls for.

Sides

Only five recipes in this section. Now, I might argue that some of the soups or smaller appetizers could have been sides instead, but that’s just a matter of organization. What do we have here?

• Apple Mashed Potatoes – Potatoes with granny smith apples and gorgonzola cheese.
• Ashlander Ochre Mash – Sweet potatoes with a bunch of spices and honey, with a nut crumble topping.
• Bravil’s Best Beet Risotto – A recipe fit for Halloween, the bright red creamed rice looks like brain on a plate.
• Gilane Garlicky Greens – Kale and Chard cooked in za’atar and garlic.
• Hearthfire Harvest Pilaf – A rice pilaf with saffron, cranberries, pistachios, and butternut squash.

I definitely want to make the Ochre Mash, but it’s very much the kind of thing I only have around Thanksgiving, so I’m holding off. I also don’t think I can eat much of the greens for dietary reasons, but that’s a personal matter. Overall, despite being pretty light on recipes, I think this is a fairly strong section.

I did make the Hearthfire Harvest Pilaf and it’s quite delicious. It’s not quite as much work as a risotto, and it only takes a quarter of a large-sized butternut squash, but it’s very good.

Desserts

If you’ve browsed the rest of my blog, you’ve definitely noticed that I’m 90% a dessert blog. I love some good desserts, so I had high hopes for this section.

• Fargrave Sweetrolls – Sweetrolls that don’t look like the in-game sweetrolls, have blue icing, and are a lot more complex to make than the sweetroll recipe in Volume 1. Probably tasty, but not really in line with what fans of Elder Scrolls will likely expect.
• Colovian War Torte – A carrot cake with orange zest. Another recipe I want to make when the season is right.
• Sanguine “Shaven Fruit” – Something kind of like the crostatas from Volume 1, but filled with peach slices. It’s a shame peach season is already over for me.
• Banana Surprise – A dulce de leche and banana pudding with whipped cream.
• Jubilee Cake – A stacked cake with whipped cream and fruit filling. Also rated as one of the hardest recipes in the book.
• Marshmerrow Cookies – Macadamia nut cookies with pandan leaf extract for flavor and color.
• Pumpkin Cheesecake – A spiced pumpkin cheesecake with a gingersnap crust.
• Stewed Lizardfruit – In Tamriel, apparently, lizardfruit is plums. These are just stewed plums with pomegranate juice and topped with lemon whipped cream.

This is the most hit-or-miss section in my opinion. I’m excited to make the carrot cake and the cheesecake, and the lizardfruit seems tasty when the fruits are in season. The jubilee cake hypes itself up as very difficult but I’m not entirely sure why. At the same time, the sweetrolls miss the mark for theme (even if they are technically in one game, as part of a set of bread cosmetics), and I have no idea what a pandan leaf is.

On the other hand, the pumpkin cheesecake is fairly easy as far as cheesecakes go, and turns out delicious. The use of ginger snaps in the crust is super tasty, and the cheesecake itself is like a pumpkin pie but better IMO. The recipe has a bunch of steps meant to help stop the cheesecake from cracking (and mine did anyway) but that doesn’t get in the way of the food.

Beverages

The final section in the book, this one has the same problem as the beverages section of Volume 1: that is, I don’t drink alcohol for health reasons, so most of the recipes are flat out for me. If you’re a cocktail enjoyer, more power to you; you’ll have to let me know in the comments what you think of the ones on offer here. Fortunately, a couple of the beverages are non-alcoholic.

• Blackwood Mint Chai – Raspberry-acai syrup flavoring mint and black tea.
• Corrupting Bloody Mara – A bloody mary by a different name.
• M’aiq Tale – Mint, lime, cucumber, and horned melon, with cactus water and lime sparkling water.
• Mud Nectar – Whiskey and dashi syrup.
• Old Epiphany – Peach and orange vodka.
• Orzorga’s Red Frothgar – Lingonberry, blackberry, currants, rosemary, gin, gingerbeer.
• Psijic Ambrosia – Green tea, fish sauce, and whiskey.
• Telvanni Tea – Earl Grey with lotus flowers, lemongrass, acai powder, orange, and honey.
• You-Know-What Whiskey – Do you know what? It’s bourbon and bacon, I guess.
• High Rock Rose and Rye – Whiskey, ginger beer, bitters, rise and ginseng syrup, and other stuff.
• Taneth Coffee – A spiced coffee that calls for a French Press to make.
• Witchmother’s Party Punch – Fruit punch with maraschino liqueur.

So, a few beverages I’m interested in making, and a bunch I’m not. What do you think? So far, I’ve made the chai, and other than having a lot going on when you make it compared to my usual teas, it’s quite delicious. It’s very sweet, which almost turned me off on it initially, but once I got past that, I like it a lot.

Overall Impressions

Now comes the part where I tell you what I think of the book overall. For reference, I gave Volume 1 a 4.5 out of 5. It had some oversights, a couple typos, a few cases of ingredients referenced but left out, but it was mostly simple and generally fine.

For Volume 2 of the Official Elder Scrolls Cookbook, I give it a 4 out of 5. A little lower, but still good. Why?

• Some of the recipes are just wildly complex for this kind of cookbook. I know plenty of people are perfectly fine making anything in here, but I’m not sure the target audience is, and some of these recipes are pretty far out of range for a casual gaming fan and mid-tier chef.
• Some of the recipes call for exotic versions of common ingredients for no real reason, like the pumpkin, or how there’s only one recipe involving poultry that calls for chicken over duck. Don’t get me wrong, I love duck, but it’s harder to find and more expensive. And that fish, or pandan leaf? Why?
• I feel like the organization could have used a little work for the flow of the book. Sections ended up a little unbalanced feeling because of it. The soup and stew section and the bread section especially suffer from this.
• Sometimes there are examples of a frustrating lack of specificity. A recipe calls for one onion; what kind, how large? The brat recipe making 3-4x more cabbage than could possibly go on the number of brats it calls for, was that because my produce was large, or is it something else? Nothing is deal-breaking, but it does feel like it can throw off the balance of some recipes.

All of that said, the presentation is great, I didn’t notice any issues with missing ingredients or instructions, and there’s certainly a lot of value to be found in it. I just think that, overall, it’s aimed at a little bit more of a culinarily-experienced audience than what your typical pop-culture cookbook probably should be.

What do you think? Want to pick up a copy for yourself, and give it a look? You can find the book on Amazon (#ad) here. I’d welcome your impressions in the comments below, too; do you think I’m on target or off base with my criticism?