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I think not.

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Full article at Slate here.
Oh my. 

The author of this article goes to great pains to be sure we know he/she loves to cook, loves cookbooks, loves to write about cooking, et cetera. That’s nice. 
The first point he/she makes is that cookbooks, more than other sorts of books, are given as gifts. This is an assumption that is not backed by any data, but I’ll not argue with it. He/she sees cookbooks as gifts becoming apps as gifts, eBooks as gifts and so on. Yeah, well, maybe… . But I don’t see total replacement with respect to cookbooks as gifts. What does an app look like on the coffee table?

He/she then highlights “[t]he value of a cookbook qua cookbook… .”

First, there’s the quality of its recipes: how easy and reliable they are, and especially how good they taste. Second, there’s the readability of its recipes: clarity, style, consistency of language. Finally, there’s its aesthetic value. By this, I refer both to visuals (mouthwatering photography—“food porn,” many call it, though the term makes me cringe) and prose (witty or thoughtful chapter introductions and recipe headnotes)—the qualities that make people enjoy cookbooks not just as how-to manuals but for their entertainment value.

For each value, he/she compares and contrasts print cookbooks with other options, all of which necessarily depend on the World Wide Web or other electronic gizmos. Here’s an example:

What I suspect cookbook devotees are really talking about when they wax poetic about the beauty of cookbooks is the fact that cookbooks are curated and finite, unlike a Google search for “best roast chicken recipe” or a continually updated cooking website like Food52.com. There is indeed something comforting about a discrete object with a beginning and an end. But cooking apps are curated and finite, too. (So are e-cookbooks, which I suspect will come to be indistinguishable from apps as they add multimedia elements.)

Naturally, Mr. Big Food and I will resist this trend. But, hey, you know, eventually we’ll be dead.

Will some cookbook lovers resist these improvements? Yes, but eventually they will all be dead. Will some rich people always seek out obscure memorabilia to display as status symbols or art objects? Yes, but in the future, cookbooks will be quirky art objects in the same sense that typewriters are today. Their value will be in their history, and the rest of us will wonder how anyone ever cooked from them in the first place.

The brain reels, doesn’t it? Mr. Big Food & I will be dead, but he/she will still be alive so the complete extinction of cookbooks as books will take place some time in the not too distant future. 

He/she made a poor word choice with “extinction.” What he/she meant to say was just as Encyclopedia Brittanica made the decision to discontinue future print editions in favor of electronic editions, so too will cookbook publishers– including those who publish church cookbooks and the like– switch entirely to recipe apps and so on. I think not. And you?

5 Responses

  1. You should see the corner of my tv room – where I have notebooks of recipes cut from magazines since the 60s. Not going to happen while I’m still alive! But as you and s/he say…eventually I’m going to be dead. And what will happen to all those notebooks and all my cookbooks?? Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think anyone in my family is interested in them.

    I think a lot of the problem is the fact that people tend to move so often. Being a regular on Craigslist, I’m astounded at the number of people selling their entire household of goods because they’re moving out of state. On the other hand, when my daughter and spouse moved halfway across the country, it cost about $3000 to move their stuff. They could probably have replaced most of it for less. So…for that reason, I could see people just not having books – of any kind!

    I’ve gone online for some recipes – but even when I do, I commit them to an index card and put them in my card file.

    Additionally, we have “Friends of the Library” – an organization that accepts donations of books (which is probably where mine will end up) and then sell them to suckers like me who can’t pass the good ones up, with all funds going to the Library. A high price for a book there is $2.50 …

    And then costco…they have _lots_ of cookbooks on sale – I try to avoid those. Way too tempting. Got suckered into two types – one group is apparently produced in England. Lots of good info, fantastic yummy photos (food porn is probably a good descriptive, but also a repulsive one, I agree) – but recipes are all in metric, which is a nuisance. Also some unavailable/unfamiliar ingredients… The other type was very plain – “The best of ” collections of recipes. Many many recipes of reasonably familiar recipes, and multiple multiple versions of the same recipes. Pretty useless. Still…I haven’t given them away…!

  2. “Big Food” started with Mr. Big Food decided the recipes in the falling apart blue notebook with index cards between the pages– sounds like you– needed to be in a more permanent and less messy form. The birth of Big Food.

    I hear you about moving. And I know some people are more minimalist than I. But there is just something about a book that isn’t captured in electronic form. I’d say the same thing about photographs, too– although all of my pics have been in digital form for years now.

    There was an episode of American Pickers where someone brought in a tattered old handwritten book, but a book clearly worth something. Turns out that among other things it wasn’t as old as you would think a hand written book would be. It was a handwritten *copy of* a printed book copied in a time and place where there were yet no presses.

    There will always be books.

  3. I’ve started transferring some of my recipes – usually the ones the kids have asked for – into digital form, but I still need my index cards. Much more practical for working with in the kitchen.

    And besides – some of them are still in my Mom’s handwriting, or my Dad’s. Of course _I_ know that – and recognize them – but I doubt that others would. And of course, the handwritten ones from friends along the way…

    Like Carolyn’s “Burnt Kitchen Candy”… she was making the recipe one day when I picked her up to go to a luncheon event. She thought she turned the stove off (electric stove – did I mention I dislike electric stoves intensely?), but instead she turned it to high. By the time we got home, her house was filled with smoke – greasy smoke…the recipe called for a pound of butter, I think … that penetrated throughout the entire house. What a mess. Fortunately, the cupboards above the stove were metal, so although smoke stained, nothing burned but the candy.

    Memories like that will _never_ make it to the internet!

  4. Well…I didn’t make it up…it actually happened! She even had to have clothes that were in closets dry cleaned to get rid of the smell. I had no idea of the penetrability of that smoke!

    To be honest, I haven’t made her candy recipe since, but the recipe still remains in my recipe box with fond thoughts of the source. I’ve seen the recipe elsewhere – it’s a toffee brittle with semi sweet chocolate on both sides. You make it in about three – or more – separate steps since you have to cool the chocolate before turning it over to recoat it. Really good…and _really_ _bad_!

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