Cookbook
A cookbook or cookery book is a culinary reference work that contains a collection of recipes and instructions for food preparation. Cookbooks serve as comprehensive guides that may include cooking techniques, ingredient information, nutritional data, and cultural context related to culinary practices. Cookery books can be general-purpose, covering a wide range of recipes and methods, or specialized, focusing on specific cuisines, dietary restrictions, cooking methods, specific ingredients, or a target audience. They may also explore historical periods or cultural movements.
Recipes are systematically organized by course sequence, primary ingredient, cooking technique, alphabetical arrangement for quick reference, geographic or cultural origins highlighting regional or ethnic traditions, seasonal availability, or difficulty level, ranging from beginner-friendly to advanced techniques.
Modern cookbooks extend beyond recipes, incorporating visual elements like step-by-step photographs, finished dish presentations, ingredient identification guides, and equipment demonstrations. They provide technical information, including detailed cooking techniques, kitchen equipment recommendations, ingredient selection, storage, substitution guides, food safety protocols, and nutritional data. Additionally, they offer cultural and educational context through historical backgrounds, cultural significance, regional variations, chef biographies, culinary philosophy, and sustainable seasonal cooking principles.
Cookery books are written by professional chefs, food writers, cooking instructors, cultural historians, collective organizations like community groups or charities, or as anonymous compilations of regional or historical traditions. They target home cooks seeking everyday guidance, professional culinary staff needing standardized recipes, institutional food service personnel, culinary students, or specialized practitioners like bakers or dietary professionals.
History
Early works
Not all cultures left written records of their culinary practices, but some examples have survived, notably three Akkadian tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, dating to about 1700 BC, large fragments from Archestratus, the Latin Apicius and some texts from the Tang dynasty.The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is De re coquinaria, written in Latin. An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research. An Apicius came to designate a book of recipes. The current text appears to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from 1483. It records a mix of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine, but with few details on preparation and cooking.
An abbreviated epitome entitled Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by Vinidarius, "an illustrious man", was made in the Carolingian era. In spite of its late date it represents the last manifestation of the cuisine of Antiquity.
Medieval
Asian
Arabic
The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of al-Warraq and al-Baghdadi.Indian
Manasollasa from India contains recipes of vegetarian and non-vegetarian cuisines. While the text is not the first among Indian books to describe fermented foods, it contains a range of cuisines based on fermentation of cereals and flours.Chinese
Chinese recipe books are known from the Tang dynasty, but most were lost. One of the earliest surviving Chinese-language cookbooks is "Madame Wu's" Wushi Zhongkuilu from the late 13th century and Hu Sihui's "Yinshan Zhengyao", believed to be from 1330. Hu Sihui, Buyantu Khan's dietitian and therapist, recorded a Chinese-inflected Central Asian cuisine as eaten by the Yuan court; his recipes were adapted from foods eaten all over the Mongol Empire. In 1792, Yuan Mei published Recipes from the Garden of Contentment, which criticized the corruption of Chinese cuisine by the Manchu.Korean
Sanga yorok was written in 1459 by the physician Jeon Soon. It is the oldest Korean cookbook, found thus far.Ŭmsik timibang, written around 1670 by Chang Kyehyang, is the oldest Korean cookbook first written by a woman.
European
After a long interval, the first recipe books to be compiled in Europe since Late Antiquity started to appear in the late thirteenth century. About a hundred are known to have survived, some fragmentary, from the age before printing. The earliest genuinely medieval recipes have been found in a Danish manuscript dating from around 1300, which in turn are copies of older texts that date back to the early 13th century or perhaps earlier.Low and High German manuscripts are among the most numerous. Among them is Daz buch von guter spise written c. 1350 in Würzberg and Kuchenmeysterey, the first printed German cookbook from 1485. Two French collections are probably the most famous: Le Viandier was compiled in the late 14th century by Guillaume Tirel, master chef for two French kings; and Le Menagier de Paris, a household book written by an anonymous middle class Parisian in the 1390s. Du fait de cuisine is another Medieval French cookbook, written in 1420.
From Southern Europe there is the 14th century Valencian manuscript Llibre de Sent Soví, the Catalan Llibre de totes maneres de potatges de menjar and several Italian collections, notably the Venetian mid-14th century Libro per Cuoco, with its 135 recipes alphabetically arranged. The printed De honesta voluptate et valetudine, first published in 1475, is one of the first cookbooks based on Renaissance ideals, and, though it is as much a series of moral essays as a cookbook, has been described as "the anthology that closed the book on medieval Italian cooking".
Medieval English cookbooks include The Forme of Cury and Utilis Coquinario, both written in the fourteenth century. The Forme of Cury is a cookbook authored by the chefs of Richard II. Utilis Coquinario is a similar cookbook though written by an unknown author. Another English manuscript includes the earliest recorded recipe for ravioli, even though ravioli did not originate in England.
Modern cookbooks
With the advent of the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous books were written on how to manage households and prepare food. In Holland and England competition grew between the noble families as to who could prepare the most lavish banquet. By the 1660s, cookery had progressed to an art form and good cooks were in demand. Many of them published their own books detailing their recipes in competition with their rivals. Many of these books have now been translated and are available online.By the 19th century, the Victorian preoccupation for domestic respectability brought about the emergence of cookery writing in its modern form. In 1796, the first known American cookbook titled, American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons, was published in Hartford, Connecticut. Until then, the cookbooks printed and used in the Thirteen Colonies were British. The first modern cookery writer and compiler of recipes for the home was Eliza Acton. Her pioneering cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families, was aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef. This was an immensely influential book, and it established the format for modern writing about cookery. The publication introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts. Contemporary chef Delia Smith is quoted as having called Acton "the best writer of recipes in the English language". Modern Cookery long survived her, remaining in print until 1914 and available more recently in facsimile reprint.
Acton's work was an important influence on Isabella Beeton, who published Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in 24 monthly parts between 1857 and 1861. The book was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, child care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism. Despite its title, most of the text consisted of recipes, such that another popular name for the volume is Mrs Beeton's Cookbook. Most of the recipes were illustrated with coloured engravings, and it was the first book to show recipes in a format that is still used today. Many of the recipes were plagiarised from earlier writers, including Acton.
In 1885 the Virginia Cookery Book was published by Mary Stuart Smith. In 1896 the American cook Fannie Farmer published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book which contained some 1,849 recipes.
Types of cookbooks
Cookbooks that serve as basic kitchen references began to appear in the early modern period. They provided not just recipes but overall instruction for both kitchen technique and household management. Such books were written primarily for housewives and occasionally domestic servants as opposed to professional cooks, and at times books such as The Joy of Cooking, La bonne cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange, The Art of Cookery, Il cucchiaio d'argento, and A Gift to Young Housewives have served as references of record for national cuisines.Cookbooks also tell stories of the writers themselves and reflect upon the era in which they are written. They often reveal notions of social, political, environmental or economic contexts. For example, during the era of industrialization, convenience foods were brought into many households and were integrated and present in cookbooks written in this time. Related to this class are instructional cookbooks, which combine recipes with in-depth, step-by-step recipes to teach beginning cooks basic concepts and techniques. In vernacular literature, people may collect traditional recipes in family cookbooks.
While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by the main ingredient of the dishes, Japanese cookbooks usually group them by cooking techniques. Both styles of cookbook have additional recipe groupings such as soups or sweets.
Cookbooks can also be considered primary historical sources for historians, as they provide clues not only about the culinary techniques and ingredients of an era, but also about broader themes such as gender roles, social structures, cultural identities, and even religious and political ideologies.
The cookbook format has evolved significantly from ancient recipe collections to modern multimedia publications, reflecting changes in cooking technology, ingredient availability, cultural exchange, and educational approaches to culinary arts. Contemporary cookbooks increasingly integrate digital components, video tutorials, and interactive elements to enhance traditional text-based instruction.
Instructional approaches vary between didactic styles, offering detailed step-by-step instructions, explanations of cooking principles, troubleshooting guides, and progressive skill-building, and reference styles, providing concise ingredient lists, precise measurements, brief preparation summaries, and quick-reference formats for experienced cooks.