Art deep dive: Warhol’s cookbook

Together, Warhol and Frankfurt set out to ridicule society’s obsession with haute cuisine, writing deliberately unworkable recipes laced with comical instructions. Readers were advised, for instance, that ‘this succulent fruit is only available in its most tasty form the last three days of June in the northern parts of Wisconsin,’ or that ‘roebuck shot in ambush is infinitely better than roebuck killed after a chase.’

Frankfurt first discovered Warhol’s work at Serendipity, a New York ice cream parlour. She sought him out, and the two quickly became friends and collaborators. Reflecting decades later, she told The Observer in 1997: ‘The only reason Andy liked me was because I was raised in Malibu with movie stars like Myrna Loy all around. I liked Andy because I’d always felt my whole life that I was an outsider. It may not be the fact, but it’s how I feel. For some strange reason, I felt that I fit in with him.’

Wild Raspberries was a collaborative project: Frankfurt supplied the recipes, Warhol provided the illustrations, and his mother contributed the calligraphy. Only 34 copies were ever completed, most of which the pair gave away to friends. In 1997, Frankfurt’s sons partnered with Bulfinch Press to publish a facsimile edition, and in 2021 an original signed copy dedicated to fashion editor D.D. Ryan sold at Bonhams in New York for $47,812.

Read some of our favourite recipes, transcribed exactly as published in Wild Raspberries:

For those who are able to secure a portable refrigerator from Abichrombie and Fitch, this cake is perfection for those spur of the moment picnics in the country. Bake a large marzipan cake in a 13 inch oval mold, and a brandy snap dough that has been braided into strips. Remove from the oven and shape the braided strips into a handle for the cake basket. Decorate the handle with almonds, mint flavored cherries, marzipan strawberries and fill with pistachio ice cream and rosettes of marzipan. Always a hit on those sailing sessions on the Cape.

Buy a 2 day old sponge cake at the A & P and cut in three 3/4 inch layers, soak for exactly 36 hours in 1/2 cups rum, 2 1/2 tablespoons confectioners sugar and 1/2 cup water, spread on each layer sieved apricot jam and pastry cream, top with poached apricot halves and cherries, glaze with jelly and let set, dust with confectioners sugar and pistachio nuts and decorate with whipped cream piped around the edges.

Put some fine cooled greengages in a timbake. Cover them with a puree of raspberries combined with a quart of lucky whip. Decorate with crushed pralin of filbets. This succulant fruit is only available in its most tasty form the last three days of June in the northern parts of Wisconsin. However since it is so tasty no cookbook is quite complete without on recipe for its preparation. 

©/®/™ 2025 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Auction listing images of 'Wild Raspberries' taken from Rago Arts