In her latest cookbook, local Chef Regina Charboneau invites readers on a journey down the Mississippi River.

The book, titled “Mississippi Current Cookbook: A Culinary Journey Down America’s Greatest River,” is divided into three sections. In these sections, Charboneau uses ingredients and recipes and incorporates flavors inspired by the cities and traditions along the river.

The book’s title is a play on words, Charboneau said.

“I did a current version of a lot of the recipes, but it also alludes to the current of the river,” she said.

Peppered in with the menus and recipes are tidbits of history about the river and its food.

“I found various things of interest during my research that I felt would really add to the book,” Charboneau said.

In Part I: The Headwaters: The Upper Mississippi River Region, the book journeys from St. Paul, Minn., to Quincy, Ill.

Although the Mississippi River headwaters is actually located at Lake Itasca, Charboneau started at St. Paul because that is as far north as the American Queen riverboat goes up the river.

The inspiration for the cookbook and its format came after Charboneau became the chef de cuisine for the American Queen, which makes stops in Natchez.

“Whenever I take on a food project, whether it’s a cookbook, opening a restaurant or writing about food, I always delve into agricultural and cultural influences,” Charboneau said. “When I took on the job as culinary director for the American Queen, I thought it was essential that I know more about the upper and middle Mississippi River. Not only did I do research, but I traveled the entire length of the river on the boat, and it really inspired me to write about the food along the whole river.”

Charboneau said she took creative license with the book and emphasizes her recipes don’t always seek to create historically accurate dishes.

For example, she said, the wild rice harvest dinner is influenced by the Mississippi Chippewa, an Ojibwa band who have inhabited the headwaters of the Mississippi River for more than 250 years.

The dinner includes chicken breasts stuffed with wild rice, roasted squash and walnut-sage pesto.

“I’m not saying that the Chippewa tribes eat this, just that the dinner is inspired by their harvesting of wild rice,” she said.

The book also includes recipes not typically included in Charboneau’s repertoire, such as the Hmong-inspired New Year’s Eve buffet menu, which includes a spicy shrimp salad in lettuce cups, ginger pork sausage

“I’m from Natchez, Miss., and I studied in Paris, so I cannot even validate that I would be an authority on Asian cuisine,” she said. “But I was inspired by the research and the things I ate along the river, so I sought to create recipes that were inspired by these different cultures in these different regions.”

The book makes its way down through the middle of the river in Part II: Twain Country: The Middle Mississippi River Region, which includes Hannibal, Mo., to the confluence with the Arkansas River.

Part II includes Mark Twain’s Captain’s Dinner, Riverboat Jazz Brunch, St. Louis Toasted Ravioli Dinner, a Duck Hunters’ Dinner and other menus.

The confluence with the Arkansas River was included, Charboneau said, because she has spent a great deal of time at her friend P. Allen Smith’s farm in Arkansas. Charboneau does cooking segments for Smith’s gardening show.

In the book, Charboneau creates an Arkansas farm-to-table supper of grilled peach salad with chipotle-raspberry vinaigrette, chicken potpie with bacon-thyme biscuit crust and buttermilk custards with berries.

The final section of the book, Beale Street to the Bayou: The Lower Mississippi River Region, covers Memphis, Tenn., to the Gulf of Mexico — including Natchez.

The Natchez-inspired recipes include a Jefferson College Dinner of Creole corn and crab bisque, roasted Cornish hens with mushroom dressing, brussels sprouts with bacon and Creole mustard and buttermilk chess pie.

The King’s Tavern Lunch is taken from Charboneau’s restaurant that serves wood-fired flatbreads topped with local ingredients and hand-crafted liquors and beers.

The lunch includes a flatbread with smoked bacon, greens and mozzarella, lettuce hearts with shaved pears, roasted pecans and preserved lemon vinaigrette and black bottom ice cream pie.

The book also includes menus for breakfast for supper at Twin Oaks, which is Charboneau’s home in Natchez, as well as a bridesmaids’ luncheon at the Burn, a cocktail party at Longwood and a sugarcane syrup party.

Menus in the book include cocktails and full meals, but Charboneau said readers could mix and match dishes as they see fit.

Charboneau said she hopes her book shares with people the significance of the Mississippi River and its cultural and agricultural influences on American food ways.

“I have always had a deep love of the river, and anytime someone can share part of that love, it makes me happy,” she said.

“Mississippi Current Cookbook: A Culinary Journey Down America’s Greatest River” is on sale at Charboneau’s Natchez restaurant, King’s Tavern, until its official release May 20.