The Witcher Cookbook Authors Discuss Lore-Based Recipes, Growing Up with Geralt, and More

04.12.2023 - 17:47 / ign.com

Video game cookbooks have emerged as something of a minor phenomeon in recent years, and the mix of gaming with everyday cooking recipes has become more common than one might expect. From consuming a 'Nuka Burger' in the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout to the flavors of intergalactic travel in Destiny -- there's a cookbook for that.

And now we have a cookbook from the world of The Witcher. It's another fascinating take on the game-to-cooking crossover, but there's also a unique charm to settling in with some recipes straight out of Kaer Morhen and beyond. The authors of the book, Anita Sarna and Karolina Krupecka, have kindly agreed to discuss with IGN how they went about creating over 80 unique and engaging recipes ripped straight from the world of The Witcher, perfectly blending fantasy and real-world cuisines.

For those interested, The Witcher Official Cookbook: Provisions, Fare, and Culinary Tales from Travels Across the Continent is now available to buy for $34.99 MSRP (See Here) .

IGN: Were there any specific guidelines or preferences from The Witcher team that influenced your work on the cookbook?

Anita Sarna and Karolina Krupecka: We aimed to be faithful to the world of The Witcher and its existing axis, but also to create something new instead of just simply repeating the very same content that fans are already familiar with. We had to be very careful to adjust our cookbook narrator’s character and new stories to the existing lore of The Witcher world; we had to look up all these little details that are not so visible at first glance, but play a big role in creating the solid base for the "reality" of the Continent.

We decided that our narrator’s story would take place some time after the events of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, so that readers can still find some familiar traces of stories they know from the games. But we also have a few sentimental mentions from the timeline of the “Blood of Elves” book, regarding the witchers that we were allowed to bring into the narrative of our cookbook.

IGN: Did you draw inspiration from real-world cuisines to enhance the authenticity of the cookbook?

Anita Sarna and Karolina Krupecka: The majority of food in The Witcher universe is in fact based on real cuisine references — for example in Velen and White Orchard we see a lot of references to Polish and neighboring areas, Nordic influences on the Skellige Isles, and Italian and French motifs in Toussaint.

Still, while designing recipes for this book, we combined many references and inspirations and aimed to create our own interpretations based on multiple factors, in order to design recipes that were adjusted to the world of The Witcher.

IGN: Do you have a personal connection to The Witcher series,