From clay tablets to TikToks, people have been making and sharing recipes nearly as long as we’ve been preparing food. The cookbook is an iconic and time-honored example of this type of recipe sharing. In its most common form, the cookbook is a reference text consisting of recipes, techniques, and other miscellaneous information related to cooking, like history, the chef’s background, information about ingredients, and more. Cookbooks can be themed by type of cuisine, a “star ingredient,” a chef, or anything else you can imagine. I like to separate cookbooks not by their recipes, but by what a cookbook is for.
Some cookbooks are primarily educational resources, written with the intent of teaching someone to cook. Others create connections with other people through hosting and keeping family traditions alive. Still more are gorgeous tours of culture through the lens of food and eating. And some cookbooks are simply books, meant primarily to entertain their readers with captivating writing and beautiful images.
Cookbooks as Education
The earliest cookbook is a set of Mesopotamian clay tablets recorded in cuneiform from approximately 1700 BCE. As one can imagine, there aren’t many precise measurements or temperatures detailed in these recipes, and there is a somewhat improvisational feel to the ingredients based on their availability. Moreover, many early cookbooks record meals traditionally served to royalty and upper classes, rather than everyday meals. The cookbook’s origin was an instructional tool for the serving class.
The cookbook has undergone many transformations over the past millennia, but entire subsets of cookbooks retain this origin as an educational tool. The cookbook we recognize today stems from the rise of the cooking reference text in the 1950s, and a large cohort of the most notable cookbooks of the last 10 years focuses on teaching people not just the recipes themselves, but what makes those recipes work. About how some of her favorite cookbooks have affected her cooking style, Amy K. says, “I'm now much more of a 'methods' person rather than a ‘specific recipe' person—something I've really come to enjoy, as it lets me be really flexible with what I'm making and allows me to make use of what is in season and in my fridge.” Other coworkers concur. Part of what educational cookbooks impart is not just knowledge about a recipe, but knowledge about food itself. Here are some cookbooks that balance knowledge of recipes and food nicely:
- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
- Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly
- The Wok by Kenji López-Alt
- The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit
- The Everlasting Meal Cookbook by Tamar Adler
Cookbooks as Connection
For many, thinking about recipes means thinking about family and the home. Meals are so often created to share with the people closest to us, and the memories we make in the kitchen are some of the ones we hold closest to heart. My coworkers all have wonderful memories with cookbooks, all from different stages of their lives. Lorrie shared a story from her childhood during which her mom helped her create a meal for her second-grade crush. Beth told me that a cookbook given to her by her mother-in-law still bears scorch marks from a meal she tried to prepare close to her wedding night. And almost everyone mentioned using a dog-eared family cookbook passed from hand to hand.
Even with the family cookbook available, it can still be challenging to make a meal exactly how Mom made it. Emily and I recently commiserated about how cookbooks can help provide more insight into family recipes, even when the relatives are right there to teach you. If you, like us, have relatives who tell you to “use your eye to measure” and “add water until it’s right,” a cookbook might be able to help you finally get to the right texture on that biscotti recipe without having to get real-time approval from Grandmom.
Brittany beautifully put to words the tangible feeling of family connection that we feel when we make the food of past generations: “Antique cookbooks are like little portals sharing meals from yesteryear; recreating dishes is like having a meal with ancestors!” We think you'll love these books that highlight a connection to previous generations:
- Mi Cocina by Rick Martínez
- Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer
- By Heart by Hailee Catalano
- Indian-ish by Priya Krishna
- Korean American by Eric Kim
Cookbooks as Culture
Food cannot be extricated from the overall culture. The recipes that become popular are based on available tools, what is locally abundant, and the dominant local lifestyle, which in turn is influenced by the country’s areas of wealth and scarcity, industries, and even the climate. We can’t learn about food without also learning something about where it comes from, whether we understand the information encoded in the meal or not.
Especially in recent years, cookbook authors have embraced the interplay of food and culture. For example, Maydan, recommended by Emily, traces foodways not contained by geopolitical borders by exploring commonalities and differences among Middle Eastern foods. Some authors explore their own origins through culinary traditions, while others are introduced to those traditions and cultures through food.
“I like cookbooks, but I mostly am invested in the story of a person,” Marni says. “The history behind it always makes it taste better.” These more personal, historical bents hold special appeal to today’s readers:
- Recipes from the American South by Michael W. Twitty
- In Bibi's Kitchen by Hawa Hassan
- Turtle Island by Sean Sherman
- Food of the Italian South by Katie Parla
- Maydan by Rose Previte
Cookbooks as...Books
Why use a cookbook in the age of the internet? When there are hundreds of recipes for pappa al pomodoro, molokhia, and tteokbakki at your fingertips, accompanied by a helpful video reference, it’s easy to do a quick web search and find exactly what you want–if what you want is a recipe.
Cookbooks are more than that, and for many chefs, what they provide is something beyond oven temperatures and ingredient lists.
My coworkers tend to use both, and find that cookbooks and online recipes fill different needs. Paul says, “I'll use a cookbook instead of an online recipe if I am looking for options on what to make as opposed to a specific dish that I already had in mind.” Brenna turns to cookbooks to gather ideas, too: “I go to the internet when I want a specific recipe or to find answers about a technique (e.g., how long are you supposed to boil beets?), whereas cookbooks are more for fun/inspiration.”
Judy brings up something cookbooks have that online recipes often do not: authority. “The fact that the recipe was created, tested, and made it into an official printed publication elevates it for me.” While a lot of online recipes are affiliated with a company that proofreads, tests, and vets their publications, like the King Arthur Flour recipe resources, it can be hard to tell what’s trustworthy online. Cookbooks, by virtue of being affiliated with an editor, carry with them an air of reliability.
However, we can’t put everything into words, reasons, and logic. Sometimes, we just love something because we love it, not in spite of but because of its idiosyncrasies and inconveniences. Of cookbooks and blogs, Sheena says, “While the internet may have short, easy-to-follow recipes, cookbooks will always have my heart.”
Cookbooks and Food Photography
Are drool-worthy photographs a must for you? If so, you’re not alone. As my coworker Emily said, “If there are no pictures, the cookbook is not for me,” and in an aside, Brenna asked, “Why do cookbooks exist without pictures?! It boggles the mind.”
I was bemused to repeatedly encounter this common source of polarization. Modern cookbook readers might be surprised to learn that images are a relatively new addition to the cookbook. If you’ve ever tried to take a picture of a meal you made only to find that your camera makes it look more like an unappetizing gruel than a mushroom risotto, you know that food photography is its own art form. Until the 1950s, including photographs in a commercially produced title was time-consuming and expensive. Advances in technology have allowed us to create cookbooks as the image- and lifestyle-forward objects we know them as today.
We also see illustrated cookbooks, like the long-running vegetarian standard Moosewood Cookbook and Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat. There are even cookbooks that are presented as graphic novels, like Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan's Let's Make Dumplings! If you love cookbooks for the photos, we have some recommendations; you just might find a new favorite way to cook:
- Cook as You Are by Ruby Tandoh
- Let's Make Dumplings! by Hugh Amano
- 97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman
- My Two Souths by Asha Gomez
- The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen
Ready to head into the kitchen? Browse some of our staff's favorite cookbooks. Enjoy!
Sources:
- Bottéro, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
- Nast, Condé. “How Food Photography Transformed the Humble Cookbook into an Aspirational Entity.” British Vogue, 31 Dec. 2020, www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/food-photography.
