Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes, often shortened to Vegetable Kingdom, is a 2020 cookbook by Bryant Terry. It received positive reviews and won an NAACP Image Award. Recipes are based on the cuisines of the African diaspora. The book provides a song pairing for each dish.
For each recipe Bryant suggests a song pairing, which he calls the recipe's "soundtrack".[1] The pairings include Cab Calloway’s "Jumpin Jive" with a recipe for stuffed peppers, “Flat of the Blade” from Massive Attack with a recipe for dirty cauliflower, and Solange’s “Stay Flo” with a recipe for mashed kabocha.[2][3] Bryant, who comes from a musical family, has said he considers food and music inseparable and refers to his pairings as "cooking as collage".[1][2]
According to Francis Lam, Terry has said his "approach to cooking is inspired by hip-hop producers", which Lam describes as "taking a little bit of this, taking a little bit of that, and remixing things."[1] The recipes are vegan and based around the flavors of the African diaspora.[4][3]
The book was one of Splendid Table's Spring Picks in 2020.[1] It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly[5] and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional.[6] The New Yorker called it "a stylish, inspiring love letter" to cooking with vegetables.[4] Joe Yonan, writing in The Washington Post, said "I can’t think of the last time I marked this many dishes to try, the very first time I flipped through a book."[3] It was named to several "best of" lists, including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Food & Wine, and Vogue.[4][3][7][8][9][10] VegNews named Vegetable Kingdom one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.[11]
The hardcover and ebook were released by Penguin on February 11, 2020.[12]
