Cookbook Gift Guide for Bakers

The fall and winter are synonymous with baking more so than any other time of the year. What would Thanksgiving be without pie, or Christmas without cookies, or Hanukkah without rugelach or snow days without brownies and hot chocolate? Pretty sad - that's what it would be. Pretty sad. Today, I've put together a baker's dozen of great baking books… read more

The Forty Best Cookbooks of 2016

How do I decide which books are the best in any particular year? It's a long, arduous process that leaves me feeling as if I'm choosing between children. Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of books published that aren't worthy of that comparison - but the books that I write about - truly must be special. I would… read more

A cookbook ‘starter library’

  Cookbook lovers not only read, collect, and cook from cookbooks, they also love to share their passion with others by giving cookbook gifts. Whether the gift is for a holiday, wedding, graduation, or other important life event, a cookbook is not only useful and thoughtful, it can become a cherished reminder of someone's love. Over at indexed blog The… read more

The cookbook market defies predictions

Just a few years ago, cookbook industry professionals predicted a doom and gloom scenario for the genre. Lorena Jones, vice president and imprint publisher at Ten Speed Press, called it "a prevailing sense of doom." With the rise of iPads and eBooks, publishers thought hardcover books sales would plummet. A few holdouts weren't convinced the end of cookbooks was nigh,… read more

Amazon’s 100 cookbooks for a lifetime of eating

  If there is one trait that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom it must be our love of making lists. We rank, rate, and organize everything. Perhaps an even more human characteristic is the inclination to disagree about what should be placed on any such list. Cookbook lovers (i.e., EYB Members) will want to check… read more

What others are saying about the 2016 fall cookbooks

  I think you'll all agree that Jenny has been doing a fantastic job of doing in-depth reviews of many new cookbooks for EYB. However, no one person - no matter how energetic and enthusiastic - can cover every new release, especially in the fall when the books really start coming. To keep you in the loop on other new… read more

Tips for getting the most out of your cookbooks

  We all have our go-to cookbooks with grease-splattered, dog-eared pages that we return to time and again. Other books on our shelves are used far less often, and there may be a few that we've never cooked from at all. At the end of a long day it's just easier to return to a familiar friend rather than take… read more

Learning to love eBooks

  Hello, my name is Darcie and I'm a cookbookaholic. My friends contemplate the rows of cookbooks lining my bookshelves in stunned silence, yet I don't think I have enough! Few things make me as happy as curling up with a cup of coffee and a cookbook filled with possibilities. My favorite books have receipts, Post-It notes, and torn envelope… read more

T. Susan Chang’s new podcast

T. Susan Chang, who you likely remember wrote weekly EYB blog posts about cookbooks and whose work regularly appears in the Boston Globe, on NPR and other major news outlets, has an exciting new project: her very own podcast. Called The Level Teaspoon, it's all about our favorite subject - cookbooks. Each week Susie will look at several of the latest cookbook releases, discuss what's happening in the… read more

A look at online cookbook clubs

Many cookbook lovers attempt to start a cookbook club but discover that schedules are difficult to coordinate, folks back out at the last minute and unless you can develop a core group of committed individuals, it becomes more of a headache than a delicious experience. One of the ways to lessen the headache and still enjoy the camaraderie of discussing… read more

New cookbook to aid Greek food relief organization

Released earlier this summer, the new book A Taste of Greece is more than just a cookbook. In addition to featuring fantastic time-honored recipes, it is also a fundraiser for a Greek food relief organization that is facing an ever-increasing need due to the refugee crisis. The cookbook represents a collaborative effort between HRH Princess Tatiana, who has made Athens her home since 2013; Diana Farr… read more

Exploring the foods of a harsh and remote region

A cookbook that you probably haven't heard about recently won a prize that you also might not recognize. But once you read the story behind the book, you may want to learn more about it. With Our Own Hands won the title of Best Cookbook of the Year at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards have… read more

Reprints of La Bonne Table now available

The gifted and exuberant Ludwig Bemelmans was trained as a boy for a career as a restaurateur, but ended up as a writer as well as an internationally known gourmet. One of the author's most beloved works, La Bonne Table, is in effect his gastronomical autobiography. The entrancing memories and charming pictures assembled in the book transport the reader behind… read more

The best cookbook recipes, period

  Everyone has tried-and-true recipes that they reach for over and over again. But even in this list a few stand above the others, recipes that speak to us on a deep level and have forever changed our cooking. The pages of the cookbooks in which they reside are trained to fall open to the precise page, which contains evidence… read more

An online vintage cookbook extravaganza

  If the thought of perusing thousands of cookery books dating back 50 to 100 years or more gives you a tingle of anticipation, you should definitely visit the Cookbook and Home Economics Collection at the Internet Archive. The catalog includes vintage volumes drawn from  the Young Research Library Department of Special Collections at UCLA, the Bancroft Library at The… read more

2016 James Beard Cookbook Award winners

The James Beard Foundation announced it cookbook award winners yesterday. The list is generally different from the IACP winners announced earlier this month, although there are a few books that made both lists. The big winner in 2016 is J. Kenji López-Alt's The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. It won in the American category for IACP and was named… read more

Sneak peek at Dorie Greenspan’s new cookie book

  Dorie Greenspan fans take note: she is wrapping up the proofreading for her new cookie cookbook, Dorie's Cookies, which isn't out until this October. She just Instagrammed the photo above, which looks like part of a galley for the new book.  You can pre-order the book now. While you are waiting, you can sample a few of the recipes… read more

An unusual cookbook gets an index

  When Prune by Gabrielle Hamilton emerged in late 2014, people quickly noticed that this was no ordinary cookbook. Hamilton, a James Beard Award-winning chef, decided that she wasn't going to write the usual recipe collection aimed at home cooks. Instead, she decided to write to the audience she knew best: restaurant line cooks. The result was a book that looks… read more

2016 IACP Cookbook Award Winners

  The IACP has just announced the winners of its 2016 Cookbook Awards at its annual conference, held this year in Los Angeles, California. There were no real upsets; most of the winners were solid contenders from the beginning. It may have taken longer than he intended to write his opus, but it looks like all the work paid off… read more

Revisiting a cherished children’s classic

Only a few cookbooks can stand the test of time. While many works fade away, there are a few that continue to inspire decades after they are published. One of these is  Australian Women's Weekly's Children's Birthday Cake Book. For decades, Australian children have chosen to celebrate with a cake from one of book's whimsical designs like the train or… read more

James Beard Foundation 2016 nominees

  The James Beard Foundation has just announced the nominees for its 2016 cookbook awards. Compared to the recently published IACP list, the JBF award nominees seem to align better with the preferences of EYB Members. More Member favorites made the latter list than the former, including The New Sugar and Spice by Samantha Seneviratne, A Bird in the Hand by Diana Henry… read more

What it’s really like to write a cookbook

If you've co-authored five cookbooks with five different chefs, writing your own cookbook should be a piece of cake, right? Not so, says Jessica Battilana. She has worked with temperamental chefs and tight deadlines before, but writing her own cookbook proved to be a much more difficult task. Writing a cookbook with chefs meant Battilana had to act as a… read more

IACP announces 2016 cookbook award nominees

  Last night the IACP has announced its 2016 Cookbook Award nominees. The categories were revised again this year, with the Culinary History, Global Design and E-cookbook sections dropped and the former Beverage/Reference/Technical category losing its Beverage component.  Several of the nominations were expected, like The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science in the American category and Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change… read more

Are there too many men in food writing?

  Food writing, especially at the newspaper level, was once heavily weighted towards women. But over the past decade or so, food writing has shifted its focus and subsequently more men have become involved in the craft. Kathleen Purvis weighs in on this change, asking whether too many men are involved in food writing. Purvis notes that when she came… read more

Best selling cookbooks of 2015

Last month our friends at cookbook stores around the world gave us their picks for their favorite books of 2015.  Now we asked them for their top sellers.  We thought it would be interesting to compare the lists from specialist stores in the USA to that for all US sales from the publishing industry data company, Nielsen.  They are very… read more
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