The Food Lab celebrates a huge milestone

I missed this news when Kenji López-Alt announced it a couple of weeks ago but it is worth mentioning – his first solo cookbook, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, recently ticked past 1 million copies sold. In addition to selling a lot of copies, The Food Lab has earned a James Beard Award, was a NYT bestseller, and has more than 10,000 five star reviews on Amazon. Congrats to Kenji! If you are in the Seattle area, Kenji will be having an event at Fremont Abbey tomorrow (December 11), hosted by The Book Larder. Kenji will discuss his modern masterpiece with fellow Seattle author Molly Wizenberg, cohost of the Spilled Milk podcast. 

Selling a million copies of any book is an impressive feat, and this book hitting that mark is one indication of how cookbooks continue to sell like hotcakes even though sales of other genres are flat or falling. Irish writer Alex O’Neill recently wrote about the popularity of cookbooks, discussing their enduring appeal in the digital age. She says that “in a world where convenience often outweighs tradition, the cookbook endures as a timeless anchor to memory and identity.” The COVID-19 pandemic created a super-surge in cookbook sales for obvious reasons, but even before that, cookbook sales had increased an average of 8% year over year from 2010 to 2020.

The upward trend in cookbook sales has not slowed appreciably even since the world has returned to normal (at least with respect to pandemic restrictions). We won’t know sales figures until early next year, but indications are good that sales continue to be strong in this category. It’s something to celebrate in a time of division, chaos, and discord. Cooking is something that can calm the senses and possibly even bring people together. Long live the cookbook.