From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cookbook is a book that contains information on cooking, and a list of recipes. It may also contain information on ingredient origin, freshness, selection and quality, e.g. the Slow Food movement's ark of taste criteria.

While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by the main ingredient of the dishes, Japanese cookbooks usually group them by cooking techniques (e.g., fried foods, steamed foods, and grilled foods). Both styles of cookbook have additional recipe groupings such as soups, sweets.

Famous cookbooks from the past, in chronological order, include:

• De re coquinaria (The Art of Cooking) (late 4th / early 5th century) by Apicius
• Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) (10th century) by Ibn Sayyiir al-Warraq
• Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) (1226) by Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi
• Liber de Coquina (The Book of Cookery) (late 13th / early 14th century) by two unknown authors from France and Italy
• The Forme of Cury (14th century) by the Master Cooks of King Richard II of England
• Viandier (14th century) by Guillaume Tirel alias Taillevent
• De honesta voluptate et valetudine (1475) by Bartolomeo Platina - the first cookbook printed in a native language (Italian) in 1487
• The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight Opened by Kenelm Digby (1669)
• The Compleat Housewife (first edition 1742) by Eliza Smith
• The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse
• Le Cuisinier Royal (1817) by Alexandre Viard
• Larousse Gastronomique, the classic book of gastronomy
• Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) by Mrs Beeton
• El Cocinero Puerto - Riqueño 1859 (author unknown)
• La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891) by Pellegrino Artusi
• The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) by Fannie Merritt Farmer
• The Settlement Cook Book (1901) and 34 subsequent editions by Lizzie Black Kander
• Various cookbooks (between 1903 and 1934) by Auguste Escoffier
• The Joy of Cooking (1931) by Irma Rombauer
• The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954) by Alice B. Toklas
• Cooking with the Chinese Flavor (1956) and subsequent books by Lin Tsuifeng ("Mrs. Lin Yutang")
• Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) by Julia Child
• Helen Gurley Brown's Single Girl's Cookbook (1969) by Helen Gurley Brown
• Diet for a Small Planet (1971) by Frances Moore Lappé
• Moosewood Cookbook (1978) by Mollie Katzen

The term cookbook is sometimes used metaphorically to refer to any book containing a straightforward set of already tried and tested recipes or instructions for a specific field or activity other than cooking, that others can use unchanged -- for example, a set of circuit designs in electronics, a book of magic spells, or the Anarchist Cookbook, a set of instructions on destruction and living outside the law. O'Reilly Media publishes a series of books about computer programming named the Cookbook series, and each of these books contain hundreds of ready to use, cut and paste examples to solve a specific problem in a single programming language.

• List of cookbooks
• Food writing
• Children's cookery

Wikibooks' [[wikibooks:|]] has more about this subject:

Cookbook

• CookbookWiki.com A Recipe Wiki Site.
• Books for Cooks - a learning resource on the history of cookery books from the British Library