What's the point of cookbooks?

The Food Chain

BBC

Arts, Society & Culture, Food

4.7 • 545 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When there are so many recipes available for free online, why does anyone still buy cookbooks?

In this programme we look into the business of selling cookbooks, what future the format may have and hear about the treasured tomes you turn to time and time again.

Ruth Alexander visits Books for Cooks, a specialist cookbook shop in London, to chat to Eric Treuille who cooks lunch for his customers from a different cookbook each day.

She speaks to cookbook writers Mogau Seshoene in South Africa, author of ‘The Lazy Makoti’ books, and Joanne Molinaro in the US, author of ‘The Korean Vegan’.

Doris Cooper tells Ruth what a publisher is looking for in a cookbook. She tells Ruth about her big hits and misses as editor-in-chief of Simon Element, a division of Simon and Schuster in New York.

And listeners in Italy, Malta and the US tell us about their favourite cookbooks.

If you would like to contact the programme email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk.

Presented by Ruth Alexander.

Produced by Beatrice Pickup.

(Image: Ruth Alexander with her grandmother’s cookbook, which still holds her handwritten pastry recipe. Credit: BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game,
0:05.9	a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible
0:10.7	story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money
0:15.1	is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use.
0:20.5	We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix.
0:26.2	The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio.
0:29.1	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:32.6	I have two shelves of cookbooks.
0:36.5	Italian recipes, Indian, quick dishes, slow dishes, puddings.
0:42.4	Some were gifts, some I've bought, and others inherited. I opened this one the other day,
0:48.3	and a recipe for flaky pastry fell out of it in my grandma's handwriting,
0:54.8	a little fragment of family history.
0:57.8	In today's edition of the food chain from the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander,
1:03.0	we're examining the enduring appeal of cookbooks.
1:06.3	There are so many free recipes online now.
1:09.2	Why does anyone still buy physical copies of them?
1:14.9	That smells good.
1:18.4	The walls are filled with books.
1:22.7	Oils, wok, fire pit cooking. everything here is a cookbook.
1:27.8	We start inside a specialist bookshop in Notting Hill, London.
1:31.4	Books for Cooks, co-owned by Eric Troye, a rather dapper Frenchman in necktie and apron,
1:37.7	who's getting ready to serve lunch.
	...

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