There are a zillion recipes on the internet, but we still love cookbooks and keep buying them – and here’s why!
As membership and participation in the Lambs Ears Cookbook Club continues to grow, it’s very clear that we still love cookbooks quite a lot.
My cookbook club members regularly go weak at the knees (and at the book store checkout) when I announce new publications, despite already having healthy stacks of them. Why, in this digital age, is cookbook publishing still going strong (despite alarmist warnings some years ago that they were on their way out)? Clearly cookbooks offer us more than their simple face value, more than just some cooking instructions, and I want to look at what that might be.
I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way, my collection of cookbooks outgrew my shelves, annexed a large percentage of my kitchen bench surfaces, took over the kitchen table, and infiltrated the family room (and if I’m honest, the hallway). And I’m not alone. Despite the infinite sea of recipes available online – admittedly, many of them buried beneath five pop-ups and a personal essay about a dog named Muffin – we’re still buying cookbooks. In fact, they continue to sell remarkably well. But why?
We love cookbooks because they are more than just instructions for dinner. They’re comfort, connection, inspiration, escapism, and often, a direct line to someone’s heart. And when done well, they’re also a delicious read.
There’s a kind of magic in flipping through a well-crafted cookbook. It’s a tactile pleasure. The weight of it, the paper under your fingertips, the satisfying thunk of it closing. You can’t really curl up on the couch with a Pinterest board (well, you can, but it’s hardly cozy). A good, well designed cookbook invites you in with stunning photography, thoughtful stories, and the promise of something wonderful to eat.
Let’s talk about those stories for a second. The best cookbooks aren’t just recipe collections, they’re memoirs with snacks. They can show us the world, often giving us insight into a culture that’s not our own. They tell us about where a dish came from, who made it, what it meant. Sometimes they teach us techniques or flavour pairings we’d never considered; sometimes they simply whisper, “You can do this” on a Tuesday night when your energy is flagging and your inspiration has hit rock bottom. It’s easy to love cookbooks because they’re not just teaching us how to cook, but also why we might care.
In this electronic age a physical cookbook feels reassuring. It doesn’t judge if you splatter tomato sauce across page 97, and it won’t disappear if your Wi-Fi goes down. It’s dependable in a way that links and apps aren’t. Plus, once you find a cookbook author you trust – someone whose style and palate aligns with yours – it’s a bit like making a new friend. You go back to them again and again, knowing that whatever they offer up next will probably become a regular on your table.
There’s also something deeply personal about cookbooks. We write in them. We dog-ear pages. We tuck in old shopping lists, scribble substitutions, and pass them on. A well-used cookbook is a time capsule of your kitchen life. Some of my favourites aren’t flashy bestsellers, they’re stained, soft-spined treasures passed down or picked up at second-hand shops, full of the marks of someone else’s hands and kitchen.
And then there’s the pure, indulgent joy of browsing. I could spend an afternoon flipping through Ottolenghi, Donna Hay, or Diana Henry, dreaming of lavish feasts I may or may not ever make. Cookbooks are aspirational, yes, but they’re also endlessly forgiving. You don’t have to cook every recipe (or any, really) to feel inspired. Sometimes, reading about food is almost as satisfying as eating it, and sometimes poring over a cookbook is enough to give you the inspiration to get into the kitchen and cook your own version of a dish.
So yes, we could Google a million recipes. But that’s not what cookbooks are about. We love cookbooks because they slow us down, nourishing us beyond the plate. And if that means squeezing just one more onto the shelf? Well, there’s always room for another.
Amanda you are so right. Like you I have an addiction to cookbooks, especially baking books. I keep telling myself that there is a finite way to create using butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Yet I still buy them. Some I simply ‘read’ as I know I won’t make anything from them.
And I’ll bet you get just as much joy from simply reading them as you do from cooking from them, Jean. ☺️