A personal culinary reference library - also known as a cookbook library or cookbook collection - is an essential part of every cook's battery of tools. Although the internet makes finding individual recipes simple, there's nothing like curling up on a couch and studying a book containing the words, ideas, and visuals of a cuisine or method or chef or theory (the jury is still out on the contemporary culinary memoir, though Tony Bourdain gets a free pass).
A great cookbook or food reference book is more than just a collection of recipes that work. A great cookbook presents knowledge in a way that makes you, the reader, richer for the experience of both reading it and cooking from it. A great cookbook contextualizes recipes and makes them understood as cultural artifacts and as processes.
Putting together a useful library, some thought must be put into the books that are in it. Some books can be picked up for a song in used bookstores, at sales, or in remainder sections. Others are investments. The best cookbook collections strike a balance between old and new, fad and tradition, lore and index and pretty and functional.
When I first started building my cookbook library, I was very lucky: I lived just down the street from a used bookshop in the middle of Cambridge, MA, a mecca for book reviewers who dutifully traded in their review copies of cookbooks for first editions of Dante's Inferno. I was able to buy new books at half off their cover this way, and older books for an even steeper discount. It wasn't unusual for me to blow a good portion of my cook's salary (about $7/hr) on cookbooks.I was also a brief drive from Jessica's Biscuit and the remainder section at New England Mobile Book Fair, which is neither mobile nor a book fair, but has the premier cookbook selection in New England, many priced up to 40% off.
Not every city or town has used book shop with a decent cookbook selection or a used book shop or a great new book store at all, although sites like Amazon make new and used copies available to anyone with a computer and a mailing address. With a little perseverance and cash to burn, you too can build a great culinary reference library in no time at all. Though I'd recommend giving yourself some time to grow it.
Cake and Commerce's 10 tips for building your cookbook collection
1. Before you start building your collection, do your research. This article, by Mark Bittman, is a great place to start. He talks about what makes one cookbook useful and another one less so. His list of great cookbooks is a classic reference, and any collection will be enhanced by any of the books he suggests. Still aren't sure about where to start? Go to your local library and check out their cookbooks. For the price of a (FREE) library card and your local taxes, you can take any book in the collection home for a test drive.
2. Think twice before spending money on celebrity chef cookbooks. If it is from a restaurant you adore, great. Make sure you get an autographed copy. Otherwise, proceed with caution. There's an expectation that restaurant chefs will publish a cookbook. Do you really think even a small fraction of those books are worth your money? More than likely, the answer is no.
3. Invest in high price tag cookbooks with caution. if you are looking to teach yourself a particular method that was developed by a particular chef, by all means, invest. And by 'invest' I'm not exaggerating. The Fat Duck Cookbook, The Alinea Cookbook, the various El Bulli cookbooks fall into that category and are costly picture books. They also make interesting reads, although the majority of home cooks will be rather challenged to produce anything detailed within the covers. They're costly investments, so think twice unless you're a serious groupie or a glutton for punishment.
4. Like celebrity chef cookbooks, Food Network cookbooks are not a necessity for your library. Most of the popular recipes can be found on the Food Network's site and there's no need to have a hard copy of something that is so widely available. Just print out what you need when you need it. Trust me, these cookbooks won't age well. Other non-necessities: every Beard Foundation Cookbook Award nominee - look, the committee needs to come up with a certain number of nominees and winners every year and the field is pretty variable. These cookbooks aren't always must-haves - they're what stood out that year and only that year (though some are instant classics and will endure over time). Same for the IACP finalists and winners. Use your best judgment. Be selective.
5. Professional cookbooks are interesting - but if you are a home cook, you probably don't need a cookbook with 20x quantities. I'm not saying you aren't smart enough to do the conversions, but do you really want to? And more importantly, after the initial blush of a new purchase goes away, will you pick it up again? Make sure the title is something of value to you - a skill you want to learn (garde manger, garnishes, baking) - before handing over your cash.
6. Cookbooks by celebrities - and I mean Hollywood types - are absolutely a waste of your money unless you are collecting them for kitsch value. In which case, get those autographed too. And hide them.
7. Choose cookbooks that you will actually use. When I say 'use' I don't necessarily mean 'cook from' but read, reference, and study. Books that are dense, exhaustive, and detailed are not only packed full of recipes, but you'll find yourself going back to them again and again and again for history, background and method. Pretty pictures are a plus, but not necessary unless you are trying to replicate a dish you have never seen, tasted, or experienced before.
8. Classic cookbooks are classic cookbooks for a reason - make sure your library has a good representation of cookbooks that have endured through the decades. I say decades because a lot has changed in cookbook writing (as well as conventional wisdom around food as well as food trends) and anything older than, say, Joy of Cooking (first published in 1931) sounds quaint and dated. But Julia Child and Simone Beck's Mastering the Art of French Cooking from 1970 is as vital today as it was nearly 40 years ago. And, happily, most of these cookbooks never go out of print.
9. Great regional cookbooks are an essential part of your library. So are topical cookbooks. By 'regional cuisines' I mean cuisines of the world and regional American cuisines. By 'topical' I mean those books that tackle a single subject, like charcuterie or baking or cheesemaking (and say "NO" to single subject cookbooks that have titles like "1001 Ways to Use Cottage Cheese" or "The Complete Cooking With Donuts Cookbook"- you can figure this out yourself). One cookbook per topic/country/region is hardly enough to cover the bounty that is the traditional, living foodways of our extremely varied planet. For example, I obsessively acquire Japanese cookbooks (nearing 20 now, in Japanese and English) and am always learning new things from them. I pick up Chinese cookbooks wherever I find them. And I'm continuously adding to my pastry and baking collection, which now takes up two shelves in my bookcase.
10. Reference books, history, food science and food literature are as important as cookbooks. You'll find yourself going back to these books again and again, so make sure you don't ignore this part of your library. I've gone a little wild with the cheese section of my library, and the historical cookbooks - books that are fascinating artifacts of a long-passed era - are always fascinating to read. Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is the gold standard for culinary food science geekery, and no library is complete without a copy of the revised edition. Culinary memoirs must be chosen with care - not all of them are worth your time or a prominent place on your bookshelf.
And one final tip:
If you can't find the cookbook of your dreams locally or in your travels (used book fairs, church fairs, antique shops, consignment shops, thrift shops,boot sales, garage sales, estate sales and flea markets are all potential goldmines), these sites may be able to help: Amazon.com (the used books are my favorite part of the site), C.H.I.P.S (Professional books, including many rarities and professional cookbooks written in French, Spanish, German and Italian), Jessica's Biscuit (discounted cookbooks and many hard-to-find food-related books), Old Cookbooks.com (vintage and out-of-print cookbooks), My own google search (more old cookbooks), Biblio.com's cookbook section (new and vintage cookbooks), Books for Cooks (Great UK Bookshop) and, of course, Ebay.com (if you want to avoid driving yourself crazy, create searches).
Do you have anything to add to the list? And which cookbooks do you think no collection should be without?
