The School of Essential Ingredients

The School of Essential Ingredients is the best-selling 2009 debut novel from Erica Bauermeister. The story centers around eight students who attend a weekly cooking class at a restaurant. Along the way, their unconventional instructor finds the “essential ingredients” that awaken and transform the students’ lives. Critics praised the way Bauermeister evoked the senses and the pleasures of cooking but noted that her conclusions were sometimes pat or overly saccharine. In 2013, Bauermeister wrote a sequel following Lillian and her restaurant called The Lost Art of Mixing.

The story begins with a prologue offering a backstory for the cooking class’s instructor and chef, Lillian. When she was a child, her father abandoned the family. Her mother reacted by withdrawing from the world, retreating into books. Missing her mother, Lillian learned how to cook. She believed that by finding her mother’s “essential ingredient,” she could bring her mother back to reality. Her grandmother, or Abuelita, owned a specialty spice shop and helped her. Lillian did bring her mother back—with a fresh, crisp apple. Food, for Lillian, is medicine and magic.



In the present, Lillian is the owner and chef of Lillian’s Restaurant, where she hosts a weekly cooking class on Monday nights. Bauermeister gives each student his or her own chapter. Lillian’s eight students are Claire, a young mother who finds she is losing her sense of self amidst her many obligations; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer trying to adjust to her new life in America; Carl and Helen, an elderly couple; Tom, a widower who lost his wife to cancer; Chloe, a young woman working as a busser at the restaurant; Isabelle, a widow with the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s; and Ian, a computer programmer who is socially isolated. They have their own individual reasons for signing up, and they independently find the “essential ingredient” that will change their lives and help them discover what they’re lacking.

The students quickly learn that Lillian is not a conventional chef or instructor. She doesn’t provide recipes for her classes, encouraging them to cook by feel and not by the book. They are told to observe their food, adding each ingredient until the result “looks right.” They learn to use their senses to cook and experience the meals they make.

Claire is a young mother of two, frequently harried and adjusting to her new life. She is so busy taking care of her children that she worries she’s losing her identity altogether. Her husband, James, is supportive and encourages her to do something for herself by signing up for Lillian’s class. Lillian’s Restaurant means something special for Claire and James; he proposed to her there at a dinner years ago. During one class, Claire prepares a live crab. Lillian encourages them to consider the crab’s life cycle and to “respect both sides of the equation.” The meal awakens something in Claire, and she is able to take control of her life and herself again.



Helen and Carl are an older couple in their sixties. The other students in the class comment on their obvious love for each other and how strong their long-standing marriage must be. A lesson on baking cake brings back the memory of Helen’s extramarital affair, an event that shook them as a couple. In the end, Helen came back to him, and they mutually agreed to work on their marriage to make it stronger than ever.

Antonia has come to America from Italy. She is not at ease in her new home as she doesn’t have a good grasp of English. She misses her home but is trying to embrace American culture. An Italian-style Thanksgiving, with ravioli as the main course, is what awakens her. It is a blending of her old home and her new one.

Meanwhile, Ian is a stiff computer programmer who signed up only because his mother gifted him a coupon for the class. He is rigid and likes to have a plan to follow—he has difficulty at first with Lillian’s free-form method of cooking. He also has difficulty forming attachments: when he tries something new, he gives up something old. Yet over the course of Lillian’s class, he falls in love with Antonia. She knows he has a crush but waits for him to muster the courage to ask her. When he finally does, bolstered by his own essential ingredient, she accepts.



Chloe is the youngest student at 18. She is trapped in a dead-end relationship with her boyfriend, Jake, who is a chef. She has been working a series of equally dead-end jobs as a busser before Lillian hired her at the restaurant. She signed up for the class in an attempt to impress him, and Lillian waived the fee. Jake criticizes her constantly, putting her down with sarcastic comments. After Lillian’s Abuelita shows up as a guest chef for a class on making tortillas, she mentors Chloe, who then finds the strength to leave Jake.

Isabelle is the oldest student and is dealing with Alzheimer’s. She is losing her memories and with them, her sense of self. The foods she cooks in each class stir some of her memories. When she makes salmon over white beans, it awakens a childhood memory of skipping rocks with her father. Food won’t cure Isabelle’s illness, but it carries links to her past. Isabelle becomes close to Tom, who has lost his wife as she has lost her husband, and the old woman also takes Chloe in.

Tom, is struggling with the recent loss of his wife, Charlie, who died of breast cancer. He keeps to himself at first, unable to express his grief. Over time, he becomes more comfortable with his fellow students and finally opens up over a dinner with Isabelle.



When the weekly classes end, Lillian finds herself feeling a little lonely. She is glad that her students have forged such close relationships with each other, but as their instructor, she is not a part of that. As she prepares to lock up, she meets Tom at the bottom of the stairs. There is a smell of apples, and Tom asks to go on a walk with her and tell her a story.