The best selling books of 2021

Last month our friends at cookbook stores around the world gave us their picks for their favorite books of 2021 which we then included in our Best of the Best of 2021. Now we asked them for their top sellers of 2021.

It would be interesting to compare these charts to non-specialist store/online retailer book sales but it is very hard to get hold of book sales for an entire country. Amazon UK produced their top sellers of the year (across all genres) but so many are diet books it is not really worth reproducing the list here. A chap from the trade publication The Bookseller did talk on BBC Radio 4 The Food Programme about UK top selling cookbooks (report starts at 18:00 in podcast) and he reported that 17 of the top 20 selling cookbooks in 2021 were healthy eating (which I assume they think includes diet books). However, bucking the trend was the #2 book, Jane’s Patisserie.

Amazon USA top sellers of 2021 list doesn’t have a cookbook appearing until #58 – Air Fryer Cookbook, then at #86 Joshua Weissman: An Unapologetic Cookbook. It is interesting that Amazon UK has 22 cookbooks in their top 100 (with the #1 book overall being Pinch of Nom: Quick & Easy) including books by Ottolenghi, Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver, Mary Berry and Rukmini Iyer but Amazon USA has only 4 in the top 100, none of which appear in the cookbook stores’ best-seller lists below.

Presumably those 22 cookbooks appearing in Amazon UK’s list include the mere 48 books published in 2020 that sold more than 5,000 copies. This horrifying statistic came from a Sunday Times article which suggested that of the over 5,000 cookery titles released that year in the UK, only 556 sold more than 100 copies and 48 sold more than 5,000. I’m slightly suspicious of these stats as the Bookseller chap (see above) said there were 800 new cookbooks published in 2021 – that seems a huge drop from 5,000 in 2020. As I said, it is very hard to get solid data on cookbook sales.

Please do remember when buying cookbooks to support your local cookbook store, if you are lucky enough to have one. Most of the stores listed below are also doing mail order and gift vouchers so you can order from them even if you are not local (click the store name to get the contact info).

USA

Omnivore Books (San Francisco)

1. That Sounds So Good by Carla Lalli Music
2. Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown by Brandon Jew & Tienlon Ho
3. Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
4. Cook This Book by Molly Baz
5. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
6. Foodheim by Eric Wareheim
7. Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz
8. Baking at the 20th Century Cafe by Michelle Polzine
9. Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden
10. Mooncakes & Milk Bread by Kristina Cho

Now Serving (Los Angeles)

1. Cook This Book by Molly Baz
2. That Sounds So Good by Carla Lalli Music
3. Foodheim by Eric Wareheim
4. Eat This Book by Stacy Michelson
5. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
6. The Korean Vegan Cookbook by Joanne Lee Molinaro
7. To Asia With Love by Hetty McKinnon
8. Cook Real Hawai’i by Sheldon Simeon & Garrett Snyder
9. Arty Parties by Julia Sherman
10. Mooncakes & Milk Bread by Kristina Cho

Kitchen Arts & Letters (New York)

1. Vegetable Simple by Eric Ripert
2. World Travel by Anthony Bourdain
3. The Frantzén Book by Björn Frantzén
4. Sourdough Panettone and Viennoiserie by Thomas Teffri-Chambelland
5. Septime, La Cave, Clamato, D’une île by Bertrand Grébaut, Théophile Pourriat & Benoit Cohen
6. Modernist Pizza by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya
7. Pasta: The Spirit and Craft of Italy’s Greatest Food by Missy Robbins & Talia Baiocchi
8. Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever
9. The New York Times Cooking: No-Recipe Recipes by Sam Sifton
10. Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen

Book Larder (Seattle)

1. The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt
2. Getaway by Renee Erickson
3. Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple by Aran Goyoaga
4. Cook This Book by Molly Baz
5. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad
6. Simply Julia by Julia Turshen
7. To Asia With Love by Hetty McKinnon
8. Grains for Every Season by Joshua McFadden
9. Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden
10. Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou

Bold Fork Books (Washington D.C.)

1. Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden
2. Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz
3. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
4. The Weekday Vegetarians by Jenny Rosenstrach
5. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
6. World Travel by Anthony Bourdain
7. Simply Julia by Julia Turshen
8. East by Meera Sodha
9. Cook This Book by Molly Baz
10. That Sounds So Good by Carla Lalli Music

CANADA 

The Cookbook Co. Cooks (Alberta)

1. Cookies I Have Loved by Julie Van Rosendaal
2. Vegetable Simple by Eric Ripert
3. Whitewater Cooks Together Again by Shelley Adams
4. Calgary Eats by Gail Norton and Karen Ralph
5. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad
6. Sheet Pan Everything by Richardo Larrivee
7. Farm, Fire and Feast by Michael Smith
8. Dirty Food by Julie Van Rosendaal
9. Nothing Fancy by Alison Roman
10. Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

AUSTRALIA

Scrumptious Reads (Brisbane)

1. Slow Victories by Katrina Meynink
2. Wild Sweetness by Thalia Ho
3. In Praise of Veg by Alice Zaslavsky
4. Ottolenghi Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi, Ixta Belfrage & Tara Wigley
5. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad
6. Take One Fish by Josh Nyland
7. Home by Stephanie Alexander
8. Indian Cooking Class by Christine Manfield
9. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
10. Community by Hetty McKinnon

EUROPE

De Kookboekhandel (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

1. De Banketbakker by Cees Holtkamp & Jonah Freud
2. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad
3. Altijd Zondag by Wil Demandt
4. De groene bakplaat (The Green Roasting Tin) by Rukmini Iyer
5. Azië (East) by Meera Sodha
6. Inmaken: Groente, Fruit, Diversen by Jonah Freud
7. De Bijbel van de Italiaanse Keuken by Maud Moody, Leonardo Pacenti & Nina Bogaerts
8. Med by Claudia Roden
9. Shortlist Amsterdam by Famke & Floor van Praage
10. Bij Bijdendijk thuis by Joris Bijdendijk & Joël Broekaert

Goldhahn und Sampson (Berlin, Germany)

1. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad
2. Ottolenghi Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi, Ixta Belfrage & Tara Wigley
3. Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi
4. Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi
5. Vegetarische Köstlichkeiten (Plenty More) by Yotam Ottolenghi
6. Mein allererstes Buch vom Essen (My Very First Book Of Food) by Eric Carle
7. Genussvoll Vegetarisch (Plenty) by Yotam Ottolenghi
8. Palästina (Falastin) by Sami Tamimi & Tara Wigley
9. One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones
10. Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh

Kogebogeriet (Copenhagen, Denmark)

1. From Crook to Cook by Snoop Dogg
2. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad
3. Det Smager af Lort by Nikolaj Kirk, Mikkel Maarbjerg & Morten Kirckhoff
4. Kogekunst by Frederikke Legaard
5. Valdemarsro Jul by Ann-Christine Hellerup Brandt
6. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
7. The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop
8. East by Meera Sodha
9. Med by Claudia Roden
10. Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden