A Comprehensive Look at Cookbooks

There are many kind of cookbooks.

There are the real works of passion and love. Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Paula Wolfert, Diane Kennedy and Fuchsia Dunlop are examples of these. Impeccably researched; these are veritably works of art that make you proud of the culinary arts.

Then, there are the one book-wonders; one should not be dismissive of these.

After all, it takes effort to write even that first book. In the CC's opinion, authors like Najmieh Batmanglij, and Chandra Padmanabhan lie in this domain. The first book was their magnum opus, and that was all there was to give. (Please let no one dissuade anyone from buying the magnum opus. These are sooooooooo unbelievably brilliant that you simply must own them!)

Finally, there are the money-grubbers. All they have is somebody else's recipes, and all they are trying to do is make sure they hold on to the modest efforts of the products of a civilization, and somebody else's effort.

Examples of this would be a cookbook called Cooking at Home with Pedatha. After this publication, the authors are pretty much finished. Since the actual originator of the book is dead, they have nothing more to contribute to the culinary world. They are left within the empty world of copyrights and laws, and not a whole lot more to add to the culinary arts.

Sad, really! What an empty life they must lead.

In any case, it's best to have an objective judgment between the three types of cookbooks, and learn to distinguish between them.