Cookbooks may be general, or may specialise in a particular cuisine or category of food.
Recipes in cookbooks are organised in various ways: by course (appetiser, first course, main course, dessert), by main ingredient, by cooking technique, alphabetically, by region or country, and so on. They may include illustrations of finished dishes and preparation steps; discussions of cooking techniques, advice on kitchen equipment, ingredients, and substitutions; historical and cultural notes; and so on.
Cookbooks may be written by individual authors, who may be chefs, cooking teachers, or other food writers; they may be written by collectives; or they may be anonymous. They may be addressed to home cooks, to professional restaurant cooks, to institutional cooks, or to more specialised audiences. - the cookery book app would include recipes from household chefs, restaurants, food writers, nutritionalists and cooking teachers.
Some cookbooks are didactic, with detailed recipes addressed to beginners or people learning to cook particular dishes or cuisines; others are simple aide-memoires, which may document the composition of a dish or even precise measurements, but not detailed techniques.
Cookbooks: When people buy recipe books, on average what percentage of the recipes do they actually use?
"That brings us neatly round to "when people buy recipe books . . . " Well, they really aren't anymore. Not like the days of The Joy of Cooking (some 18 million copies) or even the fun and dependable The Thrill of the Grill (well in excess of 100,000 copies.) If you've been burned a time or three on a useless $32.95 vanity project, why buy more? Thirty dollars for one good recipe? I just got 4.9 million results on a Google search of "French Vinaigrette." I bet one or two of them is pretty delicious." Often people buy recipe books and use a handful of the possible 100s, wouldn't it be handy if you could customise what is available in your cook book.
"Most people prepare only two or three dishes described in cookbooks, before they lose the particular enthusiasm that led to buying the book. A very few people, motivated by curiosity or a desire to really learn a cuisine, actually work their way all the way through a cookbook. Some of us, echoing John Burgess, often use a cookbook for inspiration or as a reference."
"Cookbook writers' motives, besides that of selling books and making money, can vary, including:
- to create a comprehensive summary of the cuisine.
- to inspire a cook looking for something interesting to prepare for an upcoming meal
- to establish the writer's authority as an expert
- to publicize the cuisine or a restaurant"
The growing ubiquity of mobile devices, plus America’s collective obsession with internet-based cooking platforms, were supposed to usher in the demise of hard-copy cookbooks. Instead, new data from market researchers at The NPD Group finds that we’re, well, eating them up.
Cookbook sales for the first six months of 2018 were 21 percent higher than for the first half of 2017. Roughly 17.8 million cookbooks were sold in the United States last year, and this year’s total is likely to eclipse that, according to NPD’s books industry analyst Allison Risbridger.
"It’s interesting and counterintuitive,” Risbridger said. “The success of cookbooks is really related to a broader phenomenon in the United States of people wanting to spend more time in their homes and in their kitchens.”
The appeal of physical cookbooks compared to their online counterparts is multifaceted. “Cookbooks are often much more targeted toward the specific tastes of the consumer. Oddly, with all of the potential for customisation online, the cookbooks are better at defining themselves around a theme,” said David Just, professor and co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs at Cornell University.
Experts theorise that cookbooks satisfy a more existential hunger.
“Making food and having dinner at home is part of this idealised domestic life we’re always struggling with in the United States,” Trubek said. “I think people do use the internet a lot for quick recipes, but I don’t think people aspirationally read websites. I think they aspirationally read beautiful, glossy cookbooks.”
People will still buy cookery books to have in the house, and to on occasion glance through, however who has the time to look through however many the own for the ingredients they have available to them for a hassle free dinner that evening.
“For quite a while now, cookbooks have been as much about coffee table books as they have been about being functional manuals for the kitchen,” said Jeffrey Pilcher, professor of food history at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “It’s a voyeuristic thing. People are buying them to look at the pictures.”
But it’s not entirely about escapism. As anyone who has ever prepared a dish using an online recipe knows, there are practical advantages to a physical book. “There are some real shortcomings in using electronic technology for cooking. Screens dim when you need them, your fingers are covered in goo, they can be hard to scroll around to see both the ingredient list and the instructions,” Just said.
As long as once the app is opening the screen stays at the brightness it is set to, and is on a stand there would be no issues. The app pages will display the ingredients and quantities, along side the method - no need to touch the screen.
Cookbooks can stand up better than tablets to having chicken broth spilled on them or falling on the floor, Chrzan pointed out. “It might just be easier to have the book open on the counter.”
Adam Solomone, associate publisher of Harvard Common Press, answered this question for attendees at the recent IACP conference, where he gave a slide presentation of data collected by Nielsen, in conjunction with several North American publishers. Answers came from a core group of 2500 cookbook purchasers, a subset of 80,000 book buyers, based on the the last book they bought.
Here are the top findings:
1. Sixty-five percent of all cookbook buyers are women. You’re probably not surprised. Most buyers are college-educated. About half read blogs and discuss cookbooks with others.
2. Thirty-three percent said they bought the cookbook on impulse, either by discovering it online or in a store. Another 24 percent said they bought it because they looked through it and liked it, which implies they saw a physical copy. Indeed, when asked how they discovered the book, the highest percentage said it was displayed in a bookstore (23%). - with powerful advertising such as in tube stations and on the side of buses, an app could become very prominent - all it takes is a quick search and download on the app store
3. Buyers are most interested in general categories of cooking, baking, and food and health. Other categories of interest were
- Kitchen gardening (31%)
- Home entertaining (28%)
- Canning and preserving (22%)
- Urban farming (15 %) and
- Table setting (14%).
Regarding which cuisines they like to cook, respondents want to make:
- American food (86%)
- Italian food (70%)
- Desserts (56%)
- Seafood (48%)
- Southwestern/Tex-Mex (42%) and
- Mexican/Central American (39%) dishes.
- Gluten free and vegan brought up the rear with 6 percent interest each.
4. These folks only buy a few cookbooks a year, and most are for themselves. Thirty-nine percent bought between one and three cookbooks in the last year. Only 12 percent bought four or more. While most buy cookbooks for themselves (70%), the remaining 30 percent are gift purchases, nearly twice the percentage of regular books bought as gifts.
5. Half said they cook at least once a week. They were not asked if they cook more often than that. The next largest group, 26 percent, said they cook once per month or less.
6. The top factor that influenced them to buy the cookbook was easy recipes (60%). Other reasons were:
- Recipes match my and my family’s tastes (48%)
- Variety of recipes (48%)
- Step-by-step instructions (47%)
- Ingredients are easy to find (47%)
- Recipes are healthy (44%)
- They wanted the cookbook for their collection (39%), and
- The cookbook was a great value (37%).
The recipes would match the consumers taste as they choose themselves, there would be a wide variety of recipes, step by step instructions, you would be able to search for ingredients, recipes can be healthy if that is what you search, the recipes would be great value - or a subscription fee would be good value for money.
7. Print is not dead. When asked where they got ideas on what to cook, respondents said they still read cooking magazines (64%), other magazines (61%) and newspapers (58%). However, the majority (69%) discover and use recipes from free online sites and print cookbooks (65%).
9. Most cookbook buyers use social media and read blogs. Some 49 percent said they read or used recipes from blogs. While 34 percent said they do not use a social media networking site, that means 66 percent do so. They like Facebook (62%). Social media users and blog readers would see advertisements for the app on the platforms.
10. Online cookbooks have a way to go. Only 16 percent of cookbooks bought are ebooks, and only 11 percent of respondents said they read cookbooks on mobile phones. The app would be mainly aimed towards iPad/tablet users, they have bigger screens and therefore are easier to read from. It is also completely different to an e-book - if you're using an e-book you may as well get the physical copy or just use a recipe from an online website.
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