I once interviewed someone for my podcast who shared that cookbooks are a snapshot of a moment in time. Of a family’s history, or of a cook overcoming barriers. Those are the books I want to read - history books that are filled with food!
On recipe testing (outside of baking), I have a contrarian view. I buy cookbooks for inspiration. Rarely will I cook exactly from it without tweaking ingredients to my taste. So yes the recipe needs to functionally work - meat should finish cooking in the time you said it would/should serve the correct people etc. But I’m more interested in the FORMULA behind your dish than the detailed recipe
Well said, Perzen! I wish more folks in the publishing world remembered that cookbooks are historical documents and also art objects (especially if more publishers let them be).
I really wish more cookbooks focused on describing the formula or process more than just the instructions. Although I personally really appreciate throughly written instructions that don’t sound like IKEA furniture instructions.
I like the idea of having clear learning objectives for cookbooks. I try and always at least in the headnote to describe the function of the dish and how it can be created but also deconstructed encouraging readers to make their own version to accommodate their preferences.
The other bit I find annoying in the cookbooks you speak about is the banality of the recipes. Pasta with basil pesto/ with tomato /with squash. It’s all ONE recipe not 3! Teach me how to make good pasta/come up with the flavour combos instead!
Martha turned it up to 11. I think the trend of lifestyle goes further back, in the early 19th and late 18th century cookbooks became manuals for women. This laid the foundation for the rest. I do agree that Martha played a very important role in popularizing and creating this specific kind of cookbook. I need to do a deep dive into the history and write a post about that!
This piece resonated so much. I used to be pretty much addicted to buying cookbooks until I realized all the recipes tasted… the same. The one I go back to again and again, Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden, works, I think, because it’s so much less focused on lifestyle and more on the integrity of each vegetable, and in that sense it is much more of a conceptual cookbook.
And with so many paywalled recipes online now — which is fine in and of itself but just hard on the wallet — it’s just causing a lot of recipe fatigue (for me at least)
That’s a great example! It’s also a very successful cookbook with a large following.
I think selling recipes is totally fine, I do it. But you need to be selling a thoroughly tested and developed product. I don’t think the majority of recipes that are being sold meet those requirements. The majority of my recipes are free.
This is an interesting read after a post @cloverstroud
I write cookery books but my style is ingredient based- seaweed in the kitchen and a foraging handbook. It’s tricky to pitch books to editors and tbh I was fortunate. I had to get to the final of BBC Masterchef to clinch a publisher. Enough said
Thank you for reading and commenting! I have been thinking a lot about foraging books. Here in the US at least they is so much liability that no one (traditional publishers) want to publish these types of cookbooks in fear of litigation. There are several that did come out this year from major publishers. There’s also a growing interest in the topic (it’s becoming more popular) it will be interesting to see how that’s navigated by the industry and authors (who probably have to make a lot of concessions).
I don’t remember the name right now, but there was a recall for a foraging cookbook in 2018 I believe by Rodale Books. The book is pretty valuable on the secondary book market.
I love ingredient based and organized cookbooks so much! You definitely need to have an established readership or growing platform to sell a single subject cookbook these days. But once again the audience is hungry for single subject cookbooks!
The Forager’s Kitchen Handbook has a US arm ( ingredients are in US measurements) I steer clear of roots ( sustainability) and I focus on one ingredient to ensure that the foraged ingredient is the star of the recipe. Compare wild thyme to the garden the flavour is far less intense. Wild garlic or ramsons is indexed as Ramps 😀🇺🇸
Great article btw , do read Clover’s I’m not good at hitching folk together #luddite
Totally agree and I may be guilty of buying crappy 'bread' (recipe) books probably because of the FOMO factor: "there might be something I don't know that I need to learn". What really pisses me off are books that merely repeat the "Tartine" (Chad Robertson's) process and completely FAIL to even acknowledge that and coopt it like something they've become an exclusive expert on. And call it merely "sourdough bread". NO no no no! That is NOT sourdough bread! Per se. Then all the discard filler recipes are nothing more than generic repetitions of same old same old recipes that come out of The Joy of Cooking except add a 1/4 cup discard.
One more thing I'll rant about here, even though there are many more, is the number of recipe mistakes, they don't work or completely off in proportions. That tells me little testing has actually taken place, or little care has gone forth in accuracy, and that is insulting to me as a consumer and reader.
I am also guilty of buying crappy bread books. I want to write a separate post on bread cookbooks.
I think citation and attribution is a huge problem in the world of cookbooks. It’s getting better but not consistent.
I honestly have greater concerns with the global scale dissemination of the Tartine style bread baking. It created or played an important role in creating a type of homogenized bakery that you can find pretty much anywhere in the world. There’s a cost to the local baking traditions.
Mistakes are bound to happen during the editorial process, editors are only human and they are working on so many projects, but I agree that the majority of cookbooks are just lazy.
Also, sadly, the majority of cookbook authors don’t get enough financial support to hire enough or sometimes any recipe testers, that to me should be an industry standard but it’s not consistent from cookbook to cookbook or publisher to publisher. They also can’t afford (time/ingredients/labor) to test the recipe as many times as it needs to be, which I know begs the question of whether it needs to be published or be in a book, but that’s just got traditional publishing works, until we demand change that is.
I think it’s important to talk, I tried doing a little of that myself, of just how expensive making cookbooks really is. It’s very collaborative and everyone needs to be compensated. It’s like art 🖼️ but no one seems to want to acknowledge this fact and small advances are hurting the quality of cookbooks in addition to signing authors for their popularity rather than knowledge/integrity/experience etc.
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts on the topic!
The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook, by Tom Douglas and Shelley Lance. I love this because 1) the recipes are doable in a standard kitchen; 2) there’s lots of narrative text to help you understand ingredients and processes; 3) lots of pictures of the process and food to help you along.
A Grandfather’s Lessons, In the Kitchen With Shorey, by Jacques Pepin.
I love it because it features simple everyday meals you can make for a family with simple ingredients and processes.
The addition of narrative text is so helpful. I am a person who needs a lot of context to understand concepts especially when it comes to understanding how things work or don’t work in baking and cooking.
I agree about the ubiquitous Tartine-style bread and the glitzy lifestyle cookbooks, ugh. Fortunately, this fixation is mostly an American phenomenon. My pet peeve is what I think of as "cookbook conventions". Things like the obligatory chapters on ingredients and kitchen equipment, which fill up pages that I never glance at. And as you point out, the overuse of photography, again filling up pages.... I yearn for a brief, interesting but not over-romanticized lead-in to a recipe, that starts with a clear summary of What this recipe is, a thumbnail of the process involved, a timeline,....special equipment needed (rather than those intro chapters), and Then the recipe.
And please, the recipes should be non-obvious, non-repetitive, and either truly classic or worthy new work. Not the work of someone whose job title is "recipe developer".
I once interviewed someone for my podcast who shared that cookbooks are a snapshot of a moment in time. Of a family’s history, or of a cook overcoming barriers. Those are the books I want to read - history books that are filled with food!
On recipe testing (outside of baking), I have a contrarian view. I buy cookbooks for inspiration. Rarely will I cook exactly from it without tweaking ingredients to my taste. So yes the recipe needs to functionally work - meat should finish cooking in the time you said it would/should serve the correct people etc. But I’m more interested in the FORMULA behind your dish than the detailed recipe
Well said, Perzen! I wish more folks in the publishing world remembered that cookbooks are historical documents and also art objects (especially if more publishers let them be).
I really wish more cookbooks focused on describing the formula or process more than just the instructions. Although I personally really appreciate throughly written instructions that don’t sound like IKEA furniture instructions.
I like the idea of having clear learning objectives for cookbooks. I try and always at least in the headnote to describe the function of the dish and how it can be created but also deconstructed encouraging readers to make their own version to accommodate their preferences.
Thank you for reading!
The other bit I find annoying in the cookbooks you speak about is the banality of the recipes. Pasta with basil pesto/ with tomato /with squash. It’s all ONE recipe not 3! Teach me how to make good pasta/come up with the flavour combos instead!
Exactly! Where is the culinary creativity or expertise or the research.
“Pop Palestine Cuisine”. A traveling cookbook that is also the only way to see again what was before the genocide.
The true power and value of cookbooks.
Looking back, the trend of cookbook as lifestyle aspiration seems to have been started by Martha Stewart.
Martha turned it up to 11. I think the trend of lifestyle goes further back, in the early 19th and late 18th century cookbooks became manuals for women. This laid the foundation for the rest. I do agree that Martha played a very important role in popularizing and creating this specific kind of cookbook. I need to do a deep dive into the history and write a post about that!
This piece resonated so much. I used to be pretty much addicted to buying cookbooks until I realized all the recipes tasted… the same. The one I go back to again and again, Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden, works, I think, because it’s so much less focused on lifestyle and more on the integrity of each vegetable, and in that sense it is much more of a conceptual cookbook.
And with so many paywalled recipes online now — which is fine in and of itself but just hard on the wallet — it’s just causing a lot of recipe fatigue (for me at least)
That’s a great example! It’s also a very successful cookbook with a large following.
I think selling recipes is totally fine, I do it. But you need to be selling a thoroughly tested and developed product. I don’t think the majority of recipes that are being sold meet those requirements. The majority of my recipes are free.
This is an interesting read after a post @cloverstroud
I write cookery books but my style is ingredient based- seaweed in the kitchen and a foraging handbook. It’s tricky to pitch books to editors and tbh I was fortunate. I had to get to the final of BBC Masterchef to clinch a publisher. Enough said
Thank you for reading and commenting! I have been thinking a lot about foraging books. Here in the US at least they is so much liability that no one (traditional publishers) want to publish these types of cookbooks in fear of litigation. There are several that did come out this year from major publishers. There’s also a growing interest in the topic (it’s becoming more popular) it will be interesting to see how that’s navigated by the industry and authors (who probably have to make a lot of concessions).
I don’t remember the name right now, but there was a recall for a foraging cookbook in 2018 I believe by Rodale Books. The book is pretty valuable on the secondary book market.
I love ingredient based and organized cookbooks so much! You definitely need to have an established readership or growing platform to sell a single subject cookbook these days. But once again the audience is hungry for single subject cookbooks!
The Forager’s Kitchen Handbook has a US arm ( ingredients are in US measurements) I steer clear of roots ( sustainability) and I focus on one ingredient to ensure that the foraged ingredient is the star of the recipe. Compare wild thyme to the garden the flavour is far less intense. Wild garlic or ramsons is indexed as Ramps 😀🇺🇸
Great article btw , do read Clover’s I’m not good at hitching folk together #luddite
Totally agree and I may be guilty of buying crappy 'bread' (recipe) books probably because of the FOMO factor: "there might be something I don't know that I need to learn". What really pisses me off are books that merely repeat the "Tartine" (Chad Robertson's) process and completely FAIL to even acknowledge that and coopt it like something they've become an exclusive expert on. And call it merely "sourdough bread". NO no no no! That is NOT sourdough bread! Per se. Then all the discard filler recipes are nothing more than generic repetitions of same old same old recipes that come out of The Joy of Cooking except add a 1/4 cup discard.
One more thing I'll rant about here, even though there are many more, is the number of recipe mistakes, they don't work or completely off in proportions. That tells me little testing has actually taken place, or little care has gone forth in accuracy, and that is insulting to me as a consumer and reader.
I am also guilty of buying crappy bread books. I want to write a separate post on bread cookbooks.
I think citation and attribution is a huge problem in the world of cookbooks. It’s getting better but not consistent.
I honestly have greater concerns with the global scale dissemination of the Tartine style bread baking. It created or played an important role in creating a type of homogenized bakery that you can find pretty much anywhere in the world. There’s a cost to the local baking traditions.
Mistakes are bound to happen during the editorial process, editors are only human and they are working on so many projects, but I agree that the majority of cookbooks are just lazy.
Also, sadly, the majority of cookbook authors don’t get enough financial support to hire enough or sometimes any recipe testers, that to me should be an industry standard but it’s not consistent from cookbook to cookbook or publisher to publisher. They also can’t afford (time/ingredients/labor) to test the recipe as many times as it needs to be, which I know begs the question of whether it needs to be published or be in a book, but that’s just got traditional publishing works, until we demand change that is.
I think it’s important to talk, I tried doing a little of that myself, of just how expensive making cookbooks really is. It’s very collaborative and everyone needs to be compensated. It’s like art 🖼️ but no one seems to want to acknowledge this fact and small advances are hurting the quality of cookbooks in addition to signing authors for their popularity rather than knowledge/integrity/experience etc.
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts on the topic!
I highly recommend Claudia Polo’s “ENTORNO”. It’s currently only in Spanish but I think you’d love it 🥰
Ps: couldn’t agree more with this newsletter!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Thank you! I need to get my hands on a copy. I have a bunch of baking specifically bread baking books in Spanish, but not that many cookbooks.
Two of my favorite (go to) cookbooks.
The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook, by Tom Douglas and Shelley Lance. I love this because 1) the recipes are doable in a standard kitchen; 2) there’s lots of narrative text to help you understand ingredients and processes; 3) lots of pictures of the process and food to help you along.
A Grandfather’s Lessons, In the Kitchen With Shorey, by Jacques Pepin.
I love it because it features simple everyday meals you can make for a family with simple ingredients and processes.
Thank you so much for sharing your favorites!
The addition of narrative text is so helpful. I am a person who needs a lot of context to understand concepts especially when it comes to understanding how things work or don’t work in baking and cooking.
I agree about the ubiquitous Tartine-style bread and the glitzy lifestyle cookbooks, ugh. Fortunately, this fixation is mostly an American phenomenon. My pet peeve is what I think of as "cookbook conventions". Things like the obligatory chapters on ingredients and kitchen equipment, which fill up pages that I never glance at. And as you point out, the overuse of photography, again filling up pages.... I yearn for a brief, interesting but not over-romanticized lead-in to a recipe, that starts with a clear summary of What this recipe is, a thumbnail of the process involved, a timeline,....special equipment needed (rather than those intro chapters), and Then the recipe.
And please, the recipes should be non-obvious, non-repetitive, and either truly classic or worthy new work. Not the work of someone whose job title is "recipe developer".