Every
good cook has a collection of cookbooks. Some
collections are vast, spilling off kitchen shelves
and into other reaches of the home. Others are
moderate, taking up their allotted space.
Some
good cooks seldom use cookbooks because they cook
from practice, instinct, or innovation. Most of
us, however, rely on cookbooks for providing the
recipes from which we cook. Cookbooks offer savory
glimpses of possibilities, stir up our imaginations,
and provide step-by-step directions.
The
Internet has numerous recipes sites that give
easy access to thousands of recipes. Many sites
have very helpful features, such as customizing
sizes, creating shopping lists, searching for
recipes by ingredient, and defining cooking terms.
Although conveniently printed for kitchen use,
Internet recipes are transitory. I am excluding
the Internet from this article and focusing instead
on traditional cookbooks.
The
husband of one of my friends commented that his
wife reads cookbooks like novels, often perusing
them in bed before she falls asleep. Cookbooks
do make good reading fare and offer glimpses into
other people’s lives, times, and regions. They
also make one think about the amazing and innumerable
combinations that can be created, motivate culinary
experimentation, and whet the appetite.
Sarah
Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance,
stated:
Cookbooks
are one of the most abundant genres of books published
every year, and they sell well. (Too bad more
people don’t actually use them instead of employing
them as kitchen décor.) A quick check on amazon.com
recently showed 18,028 cookbooks listed on their
website. That’s a lot to choose from!
There
are cookbooks of every kind imaginable: ethnic,
specialty, regional, personality, method, ingredient.
The following titles give you a sampling of the
variety of cookbooks but are not necessarily endorsed.
General: Joy of Cooking; Betty Crocker Cookbook: Everything
You Need to Know About Cooking Today; Learning
to Cook with Marion Cunningham
Cooking methods: Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook; Gourmet Toaster
Oven; The Outdoor Grill Cookbook; The Well-Filled
Microwave Cookbook
Signature: Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals, Bobby Flay’s Boy Meets Grill;
Tate’s Bake Shop Cookbook: The Best Recipes from
Southampton’s Favorite Bakery for Home-Style Cookies,
Cakes, Pies, Muffins, and Breads; Durgin Park
Cookbook: Classic Yankee Cooking in the Shadow
of Faneuil Hall
Click
to Buy
Ethnic/Regional: Caribbean Cuisine, Italian Immigrant
Cooking, Thai Food; The Southern Cook’s Handbook:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Southern
Cooking
Click to Buy
Health: The Gourmet Diabetic Cookbook; Cooking Light and
Healthy; The No-Salt Cookbook: Reduce or
Eliminate Salt without Sacrificing Flavor
One element of meal: Daily Soup Cookbook; Splendid Soups: Recipes and Techniques
for Making the Worlds’ Best Soups; Sensational
Salads; Pasta Salad: 50 Favorite Recipes; The
Dessert Bible; The Complete Cookies and Cakes
Cookbook
Brand-specific: Campbell’s Classic Recipes, Hershey’s Chocolate Lovers Cookbook
Spin-off from books and media: Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook and Kitchen Reader; Sesame
Street: Elmo’s Magic Cookbook; The Little House
Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s
Classic Stories
Celebrity: The Bush Family Cookbook; The Celebrity Cookbook: Kitchen
Secrets of the Rich and Famous
Click to Buy
Ingredient: The Mongo Mango Cookbook: And Everything You Ever Wanted
to Know About Mangoes; Chocolate, Chocolate; Totally
Chocolate Cookbook; The Classic Zucchini
Cookbook
Type of Meal: Breakfast Book; Breakfast and Brunches; A Rich, Deliciously
Satisfying Collection of Breakfast Recipes; Brunch
Cookery; Out to Brunch: At Mildred Pierce’s Restaurant;
The Brown Bag Lunch Cookbook; Lunch Box: Creative
Recipes for Everyday Lunches; The Dinner Doctor:
Desperation Dinners: Family Dinners: Easy Way
to Feed Your Kids and Get Them Talking at the
Table.
Click
to Buy
Age: Teens Cook: How to Cook What You Want to Eat; The Kids’
Multicultural Cookbook: Food and Fun Around the
World; Everything Kids’ Cookbook: From Mac ‘N
Cheese to Double Chocolate Chip Cookies — All
you Need to Have Some Finger Lickin’ Fun
Gender: Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat: Secrets of
My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen; Pink Plaid Cookbook;
The Soccer Mom’s Cookbook; We the Women of Hawaii
Cookbook; Real Men Cook: Rites, Rituals and Recipes
for Living; The Cookbook for Men Whose Wives Don’t
Cook; Tough Guys Don’t Dice; A Cookbook for Men
Who Can’t Cook
Click to Buy
Holidays: Halloween Parties: How to Throw Spooktacular Soirees and
Frighteningly Festive Entertainments; Thanksgiving
101; Good Housekeeping: A Very Merry Christmas
Cookbook; Celebrate!
Cookbook
collections usually contain more than published
cookbooks. Other kinds of cookbooks include personal
collections and privately published cookbooks.
Personal collections are only loosely termed “cookbooks”
because they are the recipes clipped from magazines
and newspapers, those hastily written on a scrap
of paper or the back of an announcement, or printed
off the Internet. Most people, at some point,
organize these in a looseleaf binder or recipe
file. These recipes are often the family’s favorite
as they were obtained because they were enjoyed.
Privately
published cookbooks include family cookbooks and
ward and Relief Society cookbooks. Such recipes
are family friendly and put into that particular
collection as the contributors’ cherished recipes.
Such cookbooks might be printed on a home copy
machine and simply bound or more elaborately printed,
accompanied by photos or illustrations, and have
a substantial cover and binding.
This
Christmas, why not give your favorite cooks a
new cookbook or two?
[i] Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort
and Joy (New York: Warner Books, 1999), July
5.
