Do you still have cookery books?

[Flora73]

I probably have about 30-40 on a shelf in the kitchen, but apart from my old Delia and the odd Jamie book, I invariably I find recipes online. So is it time to get rid/pack away? I hate getting rid of books at the best of times!

@Redheadedstepchild My mum had quite a few community cookbooks. They were very popular in expat communities. Some of the recipes were wild... I remember one for a whole camel stuffed with a lamb stuffed with chickens stuffed with hard boiled eggs. Serves 80-100 😁

I've got two Be-Ro books too, I think they are the 35th and 40th editions, I use them a lot.

Yes, definitely a 'thing' in expat communities. I remember owning a couple when living in the UAE.

Please can you explain what they were/are to me? I only ever saw one from Wattie's and that dated from such a long time ago. Was I basically right in my PP? I was only trying to guess.

Yes, you described them well. Usually a fund-raiser and everyone was expected to give a recipe.

It's why so many of our much-loved family recipes were called things like 'Vera's Chocolate Pie' or 'Ann's Seven Layer Salad'. My mum had no idea who Vera or Ann were, but that's what the recipes were called in the community cookbooks and the names just stuck.

I prefer them to online, I find the recipes online are so hit and miss whereas recipes from books always seem to work.

I really don't have much, but I'd like to have more.
I find books way more inspiring, but overall practical when comes the time to actually cook.

I have dozens of cookbooks, some more used than others. I can't bear to part with any of them.

I have about 20, maybe 25. Culled from 40 or 50 over the last few years. I have a few old ones from when I first started cooking for myself that I can't part with. A few that I use regularly. And a few relatively new ones that need to sit there gathering dust for a bit longer before I realise I'm never going to use them and give them to charity😆

I have loads and am still accumulating more. I love them.

I culled my cookbook collection when we moved house three years ago. I now have two shelves full in my utility room. My favourites are Nigella, Jane Grigson, Rick Stein and Sabrina Ghayour. Remember to reduce the salt when cooking Sabrina’s recipes!
Can’t get on with Jamie Oliver or Ottolenghi (too much of a faff). Recent purchases are Rachel Roddy (pasta) and Bored of Lunch (great for slow cooker recipes). If you can get hold of Gok Wan’s Chinese cookbook it’s fab - easy and delicious recipes. Online my favourite website is Recipe Tin Eats (mentioned by pp). The lentil soup is legendary!

@letshavetea oooh I’ll have to try that lentil soup! Love her website.

If you d ok generally go online then yes maybe, as someone out there would love and use them,or you could start using them again?

Only a few now - but a bulging file of recipes gleaned from all sorts of sources, inc. nearly all online now. I still have an ancient Hamlyn book with a pic of a very youthful Mary Berry at the front! Dating IIRC from 1971.

Also still have an ancient similar vintage GH book, that in particular used to be my Bible for Christmas recipes. It was falling apart a few years ago - I found a pristine identical copy courtesy of Abebooks!

@IDontLikePinaColadas (neither do I!) let me know what you think of the recipe. It is delicious. The squeeze of lemon at the end is inspired!

I inherited the BeRo book!
I don’t understand using a phone or an I pad for recipes. I have to keep checking the recipe, which means constantly jabbing at my I pad with sticky fingers when the screen saver comes on. A book can just be propped up at the right page.
I only have about 8 cook books but I wouldn’t mind more. I do have a folder I’m working on with all the dishes my kids like so they can cook them when/if they get the urge and I’m not around!

I have hundreds because I like to read them. I hardly use them any more though, I prefer to use guided cooking on my Thermomix instead. I do have a few still in circulation though, Delia’s cookery course, Australian Women’s Weekly cakes and slices, a few old Nigel’s Slaters like Real Fast food, and the Fast 800 diet cookbooks. They are the only physical books I still buy, I can’t cook from a kindle.

I have around 60 cook books and many have never even looked at apart from a very brief flick through. I'm trying very hard not to buy any more because my shelves are full (have 3 x 80 cm shelves in the kitchen that was part of a refurb).

It's just too easy to google recipes, although I've recently realised from the comments that a lot of the delicious looking recipes linked on Facebook are AI generated so won't look like the picture and possibly the recipe won't work, which is obviously offputting, although I'm a decent enough cook to hopefully spot that a recipe is nonsense.

I use Copymethat to extract and save the recipe from all the blog content. I've been tempted by Eat Your Books, which is an indexing service where you can search for a recipe the books that you own and it will tell you which book it's in, but it's 40$ per year and I can't bring myself to pay it. But I think you can use 5 books for free, so this would be good to try it out.

I also have a Bero book and like PPs it's one of the few I actually use. I discovered on a previous MN thread that I have a missing recipe in mine. People were talking about a certain recipe and all I had was half a blank page.

I have one that is over 40 years old that was given as a wedding gift . It has dried bits of cake on it. I'm too fond of it to let it go .

Me too 🤣🤣 never cooked from them!

You haven't got one with pages stuck together with sauce or cake batter that you have to prise apart to get to the essential recipe?

I do, I like having them although there are probably only a few I use regularly. I read cookbooks for interest, so even if I don't make anything from them often I have kept them although I did look at the shelf recently and wonder whether I ought to get rid of the ones I really don't use.

People often give me cookbooks as presents too, which I love.

I love my old Nigella from 2000 and Nigel Slater and Jamie from 20 years ago and Meera Sodha and Tom Kerridge more recently. And sometimes if I'm cooking for friends I'll take several books and sit on the sofa and look through to see what I might cook. Feast by Nigella or Jamie's Christmas are good for occasion cooking.

I love old cook books too, my mum has some Cordon Bleu ones from the 60s and everything is in aspic!

I made an online cookbook for my dd's 21st, I typed all the recipes she likes that I make into a document with photos and made a Wix site. She's got it on her phone and says it is one of her favourite presents. It was basics like roasting a chicken and roast potatoes and fairy cakes but also some poncey stuff she likes like Nigella's involtini (aubergines with feta and chilli).

@plominoagain - I love the idea of tiers of cookbooks! I have some which I know I'll never cook from, for example the Heston Fat Duck cookbook! The Fat Duck Cookbook: Amazon.co.uk: Blumenthal, Heston: 9780747597377: Books

And the Fortnum's cook book although I enjoyed reading it
The Fortnum's Cook Book

And others I keep returning to and use a lot, so Hugh's Meat cookbook, although he seems to be veggie these days and also Jay Rayner's new book, which is part cookbook, part memoir and which I LOVE.

@ShowAndGo I love Felicity Cloake's Perfect too!