REVIEW BY ARIANNA LITRENTA
BOOK BY ROSIE GRANT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JILL PETRACEK AND ROSIE GRANT

There’s a sense of nostalgia that fall brings. Halloween movies, family recipes simmering on the stovetop, and crisp evenings echo a simpler time that invites us to turn inward. It’s a season built on memory, where comfort and tradition take center stage. To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes embodies this wistful spirit. With its ghostly edge and collection of comfort classics, it’s a cookbook made for autumn. For Edible San Diego’s fall Cookbook Club, we’re digging deeper with author Rosie Grant and highlighting three standout recipes ideal for the season ahead.

A Living Archive

An archivist by training, Rosie Grant has spent years documenting recipes etched onto gravestones and unearthing the stories behind them. The result is a cookbook that feels like an heirloom, filled with well-loved recipes and family lore. Grant describes it as a “treasured cookbook that you would inherit from your grandmother,” and that timelessness runs throughout the pages.

What sets To Die For apart is its collaborative nature. Grant worked closely with families, friends, and communities to piece together the lives behind each recipe. Her dedication created a living archive, one that yields stories which might otherwise have been lost.

Her work gently reframes how we think about loss. “Losing a person is like losing a library,” she explains. Despite the theme of death, the cookbook is far from somber. “There’s something very joyful about a recipe in a cemetery,” Grant says. “It’s so for the living.” By pairing food with remembrance, To Die For adds warmth and even celebration to grief.

Three Desserts, Three Legacies

For this fall’s Cookbook Club, we’re sharing three dessert recipes well suited for gifting or personal enjoyment: Annabelle’s Snickerdoodles, Date Squares, and Kay’s Fudge. Each recipe offers a glimpse into how food carries memory forward. With their soft, fluffy texture, Annabelle’s Snickerdoodles are the ultimate crowd-pleasing cookie. The secret? Shortening. Grant laughs as she describes how her partner calls them “more-ish”—essentially, the kind of cookie you can’t stop eating.

Simple and quietly comforting, the Date Squares prove that even the most straightforward recipes can endure. Their old-fashioned roots feel surprisingly current, as dates have enjoyed renewed popularity in modern baking. This classic treat is ideal for beginners and sure to be loved by all.

Kay’s Fudge stands out for its unconventional method. There is no candy thermometer or evaporated milk, just a recipe perfected over decades. While this is both impressive and slightly intimidating, Grant wanted to reflect the recipe exactly as the original author intended. This recipe will test bakers before rewarding them with a decadent result.

It’s no coincidence that many of the recipes in To Die For are desserts. The foods we associate with loved ones are often sweet or comfort classics rooted in tradition and tied to moments of celebration. Later, those same dishes offer comfort when needed most and become part of the legacy our loved ones leave behind.

Dishes Worth Remembering

“Food really is everything,” Grant says. “Food is death. Food is love. Food is memory. Food is pain.” This belief is the foundation of To Die For, reminding us that legacy recipes are rooted in memory and meaning.

Grant sees food as an essential piece of family history, one often left undocumented. She urges readers to question, “What are our food traditions, and how are we preserving them?” It’s this sentiment that invites readers to reflect on the dishes that shaped their own families.

Preserving tradition can be as simple as recording recipes or cooking together with intention. By gathering and sharing food, we actively create lasting memories that carry our family’s legacies into the next generation.

From the book TO DIE FOR. Copyright © 2025 by Rosie Grant. Published on October 7, 2025 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.

Rosie’s author photo and recipe photos are by Jill Petracek. Gravestones photography by Rosie Grant.

» Copies of To Die For are available for purchase directly from the publisher