It’s astonishing that the business doesn’t get the attention or respect afforded restaurants, the Lees write, “considering all that these catering chefs are up against and regularly conquer — their nerve-rattling tightrope sprints through A-list celebrity territory, the exquisite food torture , a season’s worth of MacGyver-y kitchen rescues that throw propriety, food safety, and convention out the door because ‘we have to make this work right now!’”

The book is a departure for the Lee brothers, whose previous titles have been cookbooks, and whose other ventures include a Southern-food-of-the-month club , television work and, since 2013, a bespoke catering business in partnership with Duvall, an event planner in Charleston, S.C., where the two grew up.

Ted Lee, 47, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the artist E.V. Day. Matt Lee, 49, is raising three sons in Charleston with his wife, Gia Lee, a schoolteacher and real-estate agent.

In some ways, the brothers were primed for the task. From 2004 to 2006, they wrote a column for The New York Times Magazine called The Industry, in which they spent time with produce buyers, cake movers and other unsung restaurant workers.

“Hotbox” was also a chance to get off the cookbook conveyor belt.

“We were at a pivot point,” Ted Lee said. “How much more does the world need to hear from two white guys who grew up in Charleston in the 1980s about how they cook?”