In an age where there are millions of recipes available at our fingertips, it’s surprising that recipe/cookbooks make up some of the most successful titles published. The NPD said that there were ‘huge spikes in sales of cookbooks’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, but we also know that cookbook sales have been growing steadily. But why?

We have all purchased a cookbook. You might have bought a celebrity chef’s cookbook for your own kitchen, you might have bought a slow cooker recipe book for your mother, you might have bought a student cookbook for a young adult in your life. There is a trend there however, cookbooks are primarily gifts. Personally, I’ve never bought a cookbook, yet I own five! Cookbooks work well as a gift for so many reasons, they’re universal - everyone cooks at some point! Not to mention the high production values cookbooks often have, which give them obvious gift giving potential! 

Still, I can find Gordon Ramsey’s most popular recipes on BBC GoodFood and for any recipes of his not online there are hundreds of variations of his same recipe! What about recipe books that don’t have a celebrity connotation, the recipes in them are easily found online too. Maybe that’s my youth and over dependence on technology speaking? 

We buy cookbooks because they make the mammoth task of cooking less daunting. Yes, as I said, you can find millions of recipes online - but you can’t browse them all! You don’t know anything about the recipe and its success because anyone can publish anything online! Cookbooks exist as an authority or gatekeeper even for readers. When you pick up a cookbook you know that you can trust that the recipe inside will be accurate and you trust that it will taste nice.

As humans we seem to be very uncertain, insecure, and untrusting beings. At least when we’re online anyway! Therefore we trust the authority of the cookbook over recipes we find online. Cookbooks are also hugely convenient, and as humans we love convenience (hellooo! we pay extorted prices for a bottle of water because it’s easier than bring our own with us!) so it really is no surprise that even in this age of digitalisation, cookbooks continue to be major bestsellers. 

It feels rude to talk about cookbooks and not give you any recommendations, so here goes:

• [NOSH For Students](<* https://noshbooks.com/nosh-for-students/>) by Joy May - I was gifted this book before I departed for university and let me tell you, it helped me so much with figuring out what’s what in the kitchen!
• [Pinch of Nom](<* https://pinchofnom.com/products/our-first-cookbook/>) by Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone - my mum owns a copy of this, over lockdown I went through and noted down the recipes I wanted to try and there was no shortage of them!
• [BBC GoodFood](<* https://www.bbcgoodfood.com>) - I know this isn’t a cookbook, but it’s worth the mention!