Abramović worked with Jacob Samuel to produce a cookbook of "aphrodisiac recipes" called
Spirit Cooking in 1996. These "recipes" were meant to be "evocative instructions for actions or for thoughts."
[25] For example, one of the recipes calls for "13,000 grams of jealousy," while another says to "mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk."
[26] The work was inspired by the popular belief that ghosts feed off intangible things like light, sound, and emotions.
[27]
In 1997, Abramović created a multimedia
Spirit Cooking installation. This was originally installed in the Zerynthia Associazione per l'Arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy and included white gallery walls with "enigmatically violent recipe instructions" painted in pig's blood.
[28] According to Alexxa Gotthardt, the work is "a comment on humanity's reliance on ritual to organize and legitimize our lives and contain our bodies."
[29]
Abramovic also published a Spirit Cooking cookbook, containing comico-mystical, self-help instructions that are meant to be just poetry. Spirit Cooking later evolved into a form of dinner party entertainment that Abramovic occasionally lays on for collectors, donors, and friends