Cookbooks: A Dying Art?

With a subheading of “they’ll go extinct, and that’s ok,” this article about the future of cookbooks lures you in skeptically, at best. Cookbooks have actually increased in sales, in a time when every other source of print media is experiencing a downturn. And there is a whole camp of cooks who see an intrinsic sentimental value in cookbooks, in being able to stock the shelves full of the tomes which all serve as physical, dog-eared reminders of their respective evolutions. L.V. Anderson of Slate acknowledges this, then she overrides it, leaning in favor of the internet, and later, of apps and e-books. She declares the Internet as a better resource than any cookbook ever was, further explaining that online recipe reviews add a new element to cooking that cookbooks can’t, and never have. (This, of course, given our comment section abuzz with your knowledgeable voices, is something that we can't help but agree with.) She touches on the tangibility issue, though - the want to hold a cookbook, feel its pages, stain them with your latest stock - just as fleetingly as she suggests it will last. People will adapt to an increasingly online world, she says. And that’s that. In the future, she suggests, “cookbooks will be quirky art objects much like typewriters are today.” What are your thoughts on where the lives of cookbooks are headed? Let us know in the comment section below.     The Future of Cookbooks from SlateThe Future of Cookbooks from Slate