In a digital world overflowing with recipes, what's the role of the cookbook? From celebrity cookbooks to vintage finds, here's a curation of cookbook posts to get you thinking on the purpose of cookbooks in our modern society.
I gave away 50 cookbooks recently to the local Farm to School program. I had too, my book shelves were simply overflowing. Slowly the shelves are filling up again. Why? I think cookbooks are like stacked firewood. They need to be collected and stacked. They keep us warm and cozy as we read and flip through their pages. They excite us with new ideas and possibilities, and while we can’t honor all the work inside each book, just having the book keeps the magic inside safe for us. It’s human to over reach but where’s the real harm? I’m happy to support food explorations, for me it is a necessity.
Love this comment! I know that it's true my cookbooks are my anchor--a place where I can go and be amongst friends who always have a good idea, story or suggestion to share.
oooh yes, stacked firewood. This makes so much sense. Especially to a woman who stacked wood only to unstack it and build a fire with it, just this morning before sitting at my desk in a room full of cookbooks to write.
I love this post! I “collect” cookbooks (if you call it a collection, it becomes a hobby and if someone points out you don’t have enough meals left in your life for the recipes you have, you can say “it’s a _collection_” and that makes it ok.)
Anyway, I find my membership to Eat Your Books to be the best investment; I actually use my cookbooks and love having them ready and waiting to help me.
I’ve not heard of eat your books, this sounds really interesting! I’ve not had anyone (yet) point out I have too many recipes bookmarked to finish cooking in this lifetime but I’ll keep your observation in my back pocket lol. Thank you for your kind words.
I collect them and have over two thousand, filling a room. I only know the number because I use Eat Your Books to catalogue and access them, and it gives me a count. EYB is a fabulous subscription website/app which indexes your cookbooks, so that you can look up a dish or an ingredient, and be directed to specific recipes within your own cookbooks. I do cook from my books, and read them over and over. I think they provide me with comfort, knowledge, and endless possibilities. It's a hobby, a pastime, a pleasure, which also provides delicious meals and treats to be shared with family, friends, colleagues. My husband and I have been sharing cooking and meals in an endlessly interesting forty year conversation, enhanced and enabled by my cookbooks.
Oh!! for the Love of CookBook, I started my collection with my Grandmother's cloth covered Betty Crocker 3 ring binder. Oh the grease and food stains, that was over 45 years ago. That cookbook has been lost for years now. But along the way I have collected soooo many more. Some were focused in different regions of the world and/or culture. I have been packing to move and moved many of those cookbooks into a storage unit, I live in the mountain of Western North Carolina, USA, 10 or more hours drive from the Gulf. September 24, 2024 Hurricane Helene washed away or destroyed most of what I had in that storage unit. I do not plan on buying replacements, the internet will provide. And it is easier to move that boxes of books.
There was a scientific research 15-20 years ago, when cooking shows on TV were in... you'd switch on German TV and there was a cooking show on! Researchers found out: after having watched the show, the viewers actually believe they, themselves, had prepared and eaten a healthy meal. -- Maybe it feels the same after browsing a new cook book?
That’s so interesting. I don’t feel healthy but I do feel very virtuous if I use my book to cook anything and even feel a little fancy just for flipping through the pages
Loved this post on so many levels, I try to operate a one in one out policy…and fail. We have a good selection of charity shops here in Edinburgh, so my guilty pleasure of buying another usually helps the hand me on economy and some good cause. There is usually a vito on me from October to the end of January to coincide with Christmas and my birthday. Any new books I put on the list. Agree I have too many recipes to cook in a lifetime. I have a plan to start downsizing but it never happens, I’m planning to write one….it’s started, it’s being shared as I go and it’s hard going…especially when I know some of the recipes aren’t unique. The stories are, the context is and the history for my boys is. A great post, going to come back to some of the links.
I have 200+ cookbooks, in part because I could get publisher's copies for several years. Plus inherited ones and gifted ones, and yes, purchased ones.
My goal for 2025 is to cook from each one, and to get rid of the ones I don't like. It's going well: Looked at 10 cookbooks, cooked eight recipes from six cookbooks, got rid of four.
What an interesting discussion! i have Libib to file all my books, but i really love Eat your books too. it allows you to not only add your cookbooks on your virtual shelf but also to search for specific ingredient/ recipe and find it ( in your own cookbooks). I have few hundreds of cookbooks.
I don’t. I check them out from my public library, take them for a quick test drive, and return them when due. The number worth buying is only 1 or 2%, if that.
I love this discussion! I do have a lot of cookbooks and yes I only cook from a handful of them. And yes I'm in the camp of "dreaming of writing my own". Glad I found you fellow foodie and cook in Oceania!
Going to the library or the used book store also fulfills Cookbook Acquisition Urges. The time limit means I read or cook from the library books more than my own.
And then because those Afghan recipes are so good, so neat, I end up drawing out the recipe in a notebook: so much faster than copying it out, so much more accessible than a tiny phone screen.
I love the term CAU and will be using it more often! I feel like the cookbook section of libraries keeps getting smaller or i only find the celebrity versions there. Must go look again though and see if i can find any gems.
We have small local library boxes in some neighbourhoods in NZ. Just a wooden box where you donate some books and take some from the box in exchange. I’ve found some interesting cookbooks in there as often people try to destash their collections there.
I have lots of cookbooks and I have only really cooked recipies from 2 of them. I also collect them to have a sense of somewhere's gastronomy and cooking narrative. And as a food photographer, I love just looking at them for their visual stories!
I gave away 50 cookbooks recently to the local Farm to School program. I had too, my book shelves were simply overflowing. Slowly the shelves are filling up again. Why? I think cookbooks are like stacked firewood. They need to be collected and stacked. They keep us warm and cozy as we read and flip through their pages. They excite us with new ideas and possibilities, and while we can’t honor all the work inside each book, just having the book keeps the magic inside safe for us. It’s human to over reach but where’s the real harm? I’m happy to support food explorations, for me it is a necessity.
Love this comment! I know that it's true my cookbooks are my anchor--a place where I can go and be amongst friends who always have a good idea, story or suggestion to share.
oooh yes, stacked firewood. This makes so much sense. Especially to a woman who stacked wood only to unstack it and build a fire with it, just this morning before sitting at my desk in a room full of cookbooks to write.
Oh, and I order all my cookbooks from Unity Books; not Amazon. Recommend!
Love this discussion so much! Thank you for writing it and sharing with us. And thank you so much for the excitement about Panadería!💗
I love this post! I “collect” cookbooks (if you call it a collection, it becomes a hobby and if someone points out you don’t have enough meals left in your life for the recipes you have, you can say “it’s a _collection_” and that makes it ok.)
Anyway, I find my membership to Eat Your Books to be the best investment; I actually use my cookbooks and love having them ready and waiting to help me.
I’ve not heard of eat your books, this sounds really interesting! I’ve not had anyone (yet) point out I have too many recipes bookmarked to finish cooking in this lifetime but I’ll keep your observation in my back pocket lol. Thank you for your kind words.
Eat Your Books is fantastic.
I collect them and have over two thousand, filling a room. I only know the number because I use Eat Your Books to catalogue and access them, and it gives me a count. EYB is a fabulous subscription website/app which indexes your cookbooks, so that you can look up a dish or an ingredient, and be directed to specific recipes within your own cookbooks. I do cook from my books, and read them over and over. I think they provide me with comfort, knowledge, and endless possibilities. It's a hobby, a pastime, a pleasure, which also provides delicious meals and treats to be shared with family, friends, colleagues. My husband and I have been sharing cooking and meals in an endlessly interesting forty year conversation, enhanced and enabled by my cookbooks.
Thank you for quite possibly the kindest substack shout out ever!
Oh!! for the Love of CookBook, I started my collection with my Grandmother's cloth covered Betty Crocker 3 ring binder. Oh the grease and food stains, that was over 45 years ago. That cookbook has been lost for years now. But along the way I have collected soooo many more. Some were focused in different regions of the world and/or culture. I have been packing to move and moved many of those cookbooks into a storage unit, I live in the mountain of Western North Carolina, USA, 10 or more hours drive from the Gulf. September 24, 2024 Hurricane Helene washed away or destroyed most of what I had in that storage unit. I do not plan on buying replacements, the internet will provide. And it is easier to move that boxes of books.
There was a scientific research 15-20 years ago, when cooking shows on TV were in... you'd switch on German TV and there was a cooking show on! Researchers found out: after having watched the show, the viewers actually believe they, themselves, had prepared and eaten a healthy meal. -- Maybe it feels the same after browsing a new cook book?
That’s so interesting. I don’t feel healthy but I do feel very virtuous if I use my book to cook anything and even feel a little fancy just for flipping through the pages
relatable!! Especially if the book offers knowledge to a world beyond our own--via culture or travel or family stories.
Absolutely
Loved this post on so many levels, I try to operate a one in one out policy…and fail. We have a good selection of charity shops here in Edinburgh, so my guilty pleasure of buying another usually helps the hand me on economy and some good cause. There is usually a vito on me from October to the end of January to coincide with Christmas and my birthday. Any new books I put on the list. Agree I have too many recipes to cook in a lifetime. I have a plan to start downsizing but it never happens, I’m planning to write one….it’s started, it’s being shared as I go and it’s hard going…especially when I know some of the recipes aren’t unique. The stories are, the context is and the history for my boys is. A great post, going to come back to some of the links.
I have 200+ cookbooks, in part because I could get publisher's copies for several years. Plus inherited ones and gifted ones, and yes, purchased ones.
My goal for 2025 is to cook from each one, and to get rid of the ones I don't like. It's going well: Looked at 10 cookbooks, cooked eight recipes from six cookbooks, got rid of four.
What an interesting discussion! i have Libib to file all my books, but i really love Eat your books too. it allows you to not only add your cookbooks on your virtual shelf but also to search for specific ingredient/ recipe and find it ( in your own cookbooks). I have few hundreds of cookbooks.
I don’t. I check them out from my public library, take them for a quick test drive, and return them when due. The number worth buying is only 1 or 2%, if that.
I love this discussion! I do have a lot of cookbooks and yes I only cook from a handful of them. And yes I'm in the camp of "dreaming of writing my own". Glad I found you fellow foodie and cook in Oceania!
Going to the library or the used book store also fulfills Cookbook Acquisition Urges. The time limit means I read or cook from the library books more than my own.
And then because those Afghan recipes are so good, so neat, I end up drawing out the recipe in a notebook: so much faster than copying it out, so much more accessible than a tiny phone screen.
I love the term CAU and will be using it more often! I feel like the cookbook section of libraries keeps getting smaller or i only find the celebrity versions there. Must go look again though and see if i can find any gems.
We have small local library boxes in some neighbourhoods in NZ. Just a wooden box where you donate some books and take some from the box in exchange. I’ve found some interesting cookbooks in there as often people try to destash their collections there.
See if your library takes acquisition requests.
And if the cookbook section is poor but they take (and actually use!) donations, might be a good cause.
Not in my wheelhouse. Have not bought a cookbook for 15 years, I develop my own recipes now on George’s Kitchen right here on Substack
I feel quite guilty buying a cookbook when most of my consumption is online recipes. Definitely will check out yours too, rabbit hole here we come
I have lots of cookbooks and I have only really cooked recipies from 2 of them. I also collect them to have a sense of somewhere's gastronomy and cooking narrative. And as a food photographer, I love just looking at them for their visual stories!