New Cookbook Makes Studying for the SAT a Piece of Cake

Would you describe zucchini brownies as mellifluous or paly? Or possibly the source of a protuberant midriff?

If you’re lost for the answer, you may need the help of 14-year-old Charis Freiman-Mendel. She’s been cooking up an innovative way to help students learn their SAT vocabulary with a new book, Cook Your Way Through the S.A.T.

Charis got the idea to create her own cookbook by combining her love of cooking with the need to fulfill a homeschool art requirement and study for the SSAT - the Secondary School Admission Test , which resembles the SAT and helps determine placement into independent junior high and high schools .

“Throughout the years, I’d been keeping track of recipes I liked,” says Charis, who believes her passion for cooking began while watching her father in the kitchen. “I just thought of a way to incorporate one thing that I loved and one thing I had to do and make it fun.”

Despite being 12 years old at the time, she took on the challenge of developing 99 recipes, which she then incorporated with 1,000 SAT vocabulary words. With the help of her mother, Jennie Ann Freiman, she completed the 243-page book in about two years.

“Charis is like a cooking idiot savant,” says Ms. Freiman. “I can honestly tell you I had zero to do with any of the recipes. She’s been seriously cooking since she was 7 or 8.” Ms. Freiman says that her daughter’s scores on the verbal section of the SSAT jumped to the 97th percentile, more than a 10 percent increase, since completing the book.

Charis and her mother decided to self-publish Cook Your Way Through the S.A.T. using CreateSpace, which prints and distributes copies on demand through Amazon.com. The book was released today for $14.99.
—Lacey Johnson