The best cookbooks of 2018 by the experts

December 21, 2018 by
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Who knows cookbooks better than the owners of specialist cookbook stores? They stock and sell thousands of cookbooks and because their stores are focused on food and drink books, they are true experts. They read the books, cook from them and then share their knowledge with their customers. When shopping for cookbook gifts this holiday season, please think about supporting… read more

Epicurious breaks the mold with new cookbook awards

December 20, 2018 by
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Readers of this blog are no strangers to cookbook awards. Each year, we provide full coverage of prestigious awards from the JBF and IACP, plus report on Food52's The Piglet and other awards from across the globe. One entity that has heretofore not assembled any cookbook awards is the culinary website Epicurious. This December, that changed, with the announcement of… read more

Leaving a cookbook legacy

December 4, 2018 by
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If you have a significant number of cookbooks, you may have thought about what will happen to your collection when you are no longer around or able to keep it. You might have a plan for some or even all of your books, perhaps bequeathing them to friends, family, or the local library. But what would you do if you… read more

This cookbook sets the mood with color

November 19, 2018 by
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Gorgeous, color-saturated photographs of food are a given on Instagram and in most modern cookbooks. One of 2018's new cookbooks takes this concept to the extreme: Pantone Foodmood. Yes, you read that correctly, this is from the color company Pantone, which produces exacting color specifications for corporations, graphic designers, and everyone interested in the world of color. It's often said… read more

Indexing a masterpiece – The Escoffier Cookbook

November 14, 2018 by
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The average cookbook contains about 175 recipes. Indexing a book with that many recipes takes some time, as Members who have volunteered to index a book well know. Some books fall well below this average and a few books exceed it by a significant number of recipes. Even the most prolific cookbook authors, however, generally do not exceed a few… read more

Omnivore Books celebrates ten years

October 24, 2018 by
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In the last couple of years, we have brought you plenty of bad news about cookbook stores closing down or facing a precarious financial situation. That's why we are excited to share some good news: San Francisco's Omnivore Books is celebrating its tenth anniversary! Eater interviewed owner Celia Sack on how her store has not only survived, but has thrived… read more

Mark Hix adores this classic cookbook

August 26, 2018 by
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Mark Hix is a celebrated food writer and renowned restaurateur. He has five acclaimed restaurants, pens a weekly column in the Independent on Saturday magazine, and has written several award-winning cookbooks. Hix has an impressive 2,500+ volume cookbook collection, but he admits he really only reads a few of these with any regularity. One of those is Anna del Conte's… read more

For the love of cookbooks

August 12, 2018 by
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In July 2017, Debbie Vanni lost almost every one of her cookbooks from fifty years of collecting due to a flood. Vanni, who runs the website theculinarycellar.com, was devastated. Many of the books held special meaning to her, like her grandmother's 1914 Fannie Farmer cookbook. Says Vanni, "Inside she had written her name and address of where she lived while in… read more

Anthony Bourdain’s recommended reading

August 5, 2018 by
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Die-hard fans of Anthony Bourdain loved reading his books nearly as much as they loved watching his entertaining travel programs. It's sad to know that we'll never enjoy another Kitchen Confidential or Medium Raw. The next best thing might be to read books that he recommended. Now we can do just that, because the New York Public Library has compiled a list of… read more

Another cookbook store closes its door

July 6, 2018 by
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It's always disheartening to learn of a cookbook store that has closed. This time it's Good Egg in Toronto, Canada. The store closed last month following unsuccessful lease negotiations. "We couldn't come to a mutually beneficial agreement with our landlord, so we've decided to close," owner Mika Bareket says. Bareket would like to reopen Good Egg, but can only do so… read more

Make a bee-line for this cookbook

June 4, 2018 by
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If you have never visited Asheville, North Carolina, you should do so at your earliest convenience. Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the city is surrounded by stunning scenery and is home to the always-impressive Biltmore, the magnificent "country home" of George Vanderbilt. The celebrated mountain town is currently being recognized for "the two Bs": beer and bees. It's home… read more

The world’s largest cookbook collection

May 24, 2018 by
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Longtime Members of EYB may recall our interview in mid-2013 of EYB Member Sue Jimenez, who was at the time attempting to claim the world record for largest cookbook collection. In July 2013 she got the record, with an official tally of 2,970 (which shot up to 3,693 by that November). Sue remains the Guinness World Record holder for largest cookbook… read more

Pastry chefs choose the best baking cookbooks

May 18, 2018 by
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  I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for lists - especially lists about cookbooks. That's why I honed in on The Strategist's article about the best baking books as selected by pastry chefs. Nine top U.S. pastry chefs and professional bakers were asked to give their opinions on which books were the best in several categories. Some… read more

Winners of the JBF Cookbook Awards

April 27, 2018 by
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  Jane and Jenny are at the James Beard Foundation awards ceremony in New York City, and live-tweeted the winners of the JBF Cookbook Awards. The first announcement was in the American category, where The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman and Beth Dooley edged out Homegrown and The Lost Kitchen.  It's no surprise that the comprehensive Modernist Bread: The Art… read more

The winner of Food52’s ‘The Piglet’

April 10, 2018 by
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2018's The Piglet cookbook competition may have been the best one yet. Sixteen amazing cookbooks (you can find the complete list here) went head-to-head in a bracketed contest, with the winners advancing to the next round. There were some tough calls along the way, and the usual criticism about the way the judges approached each book.  The Piglet is different than… read more

These classic books are being overlooked by new cooks

April 9, 2018 by
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For many of us, learning to cook meant spending time with classic cookbooks like Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Joy of Cooking, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and others published between in the last 60+ years. All of these books share one trait: they are not lavishly illustrated. A few line drawings appear here and there to demonstrate a technique,… read more

Is this the world’s most expensive cookbook?

April 7, 2018 by
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 It is not unusual for old and rare cookbooks to fetch handsome prices. Even some new cookbooks, like the multi-volume set of Modernist Cuisine, cost several hundred dollars. However, a recently released tome about pizza may be setting a record for the most expensive new cookbook. The extremely limited edition Pizza from Scratch (available through the NYC bookstore Kitchen Arts & Letters)… read more

JBF Cookbook Award nominees announced

March 14, 2018 by
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  Today the James Beard Foundation announced the nominees for its 2018 Cookbook Awards and other food writing/media awards. It is always interesting to compare the JBF list to the IACP list to see how many books overlap between them. If a book has made both lists, it has to be one of the best of the year. In 2018,… read more

Fundraiser to save the Kitchen Witch

February 28, 2018 by
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Kitchen Witch Cook Book Shop has been serving cookbook lovers for over 18 years in New Orleans. Their shop located in the historic Bayou Road/Broad Street corridor is struggling to keep their doors open. The good news is that in the next year many high profile businesses and entertainment venues are set to open. The bad news is that with… read more

IACP Cookbook Award winners

February 25, 2018 by
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  Jenny and Jane attended the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) annual meeting in New York City. That means they were able to see the winners of the 2018 IACP Cookbook Awards  in person! The rest of us had to follow along on Twitter - and now we know the winners. We've updated our IACP 2018 community page to note… read more

Food52’s ‘The Piglet’ cookbook competition returns for 2018

February 23, 2018 by
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  Indexed website Food52 has just announced the competitors for its cookbook competition called The Piglet. Now in its ninth year, the contest pits sixteen books against one another in a bracketed tournament competition. Over the course of several weeks, each of the judges (who are top food writers, chefs, and celebrities) make dishes from two books and announce which… read more

California fire relief effort aims to replace cookbooks

February 5, 2018 by
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  Last year's wildfires in California devastated entire communities. Thousands of people lost their homes and belongings as the firestorm swept through several towns. For some people the losses were absolute, where nothing remained in the ashes of what they once called home. Cherished cookbooks were among the items people lost. I'm sure that EYB Members would be heartbroken to… read more

Two cookbook awards nominee lists announced

January 30, 2018 by
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Cookbook awards season seems to creep up earlier and earlier each year. No sooner than we finish compiling our "best of" lists here at EYB, than announcements for various awards start popping up in our news feeds. Today we learned about two organizations that have released their nominees for the 2018 cookbook awards.  The first of these is from The… read more

Best selling cookbooks of 2017

January 23, 2018 by
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Last month our friends at cookbook stores around the world gave us their picks for their favorite books of 2017. 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.   The unstoppable… read more

Your cookbook collection could be worth more than you think

January 11, 2018 by
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  When you think of collectible cookbooks, you probably consider volumes like a first edition of Joy of Cooking or a signed copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, both of which are highly sought after books. But these aren't the only cookbooks that are worth collecting. According to Food & Wine, many other volumes may be valuable as well.… read more
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