Sales remain buoyant but Prue Leith says many books are bought for coffee tables while home cooks get recipes online

We salivate over the sizzling sardines and feel the Mediterranean heat on sun-kissed olive groves. The photography in cookery books is so visually enthralling that the smell of sea air is almost palpable in glistening shots of the fisherman’s haul.

When we come to cook, however, the cookbook stays on the coffee table. Instead, we turn to Google, according to the cookery doyenne Prue Leith. Or even order in a takeaway.



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“Now the look of the book dictates the sale,” Leith writes in the Radio Times. “In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy.

“Today, if we cook, we Google it. New cookbooks lie on the coffee table and we drool over Tuscan landscapes and rustic bread ovens. Before ordering in a pizza.”



Not that cookery book sales are suffering. Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Tom Kerridge are regularly among Christmas bestsellers, while the cookbook remains a highly popular purchase throughout the year. It is the purpose of that purchase that would seem to have changed, according to Leith. Today it is less about instruction and more about beautifying homes.

With summer holidays increasing the popularity of destination cookbooks, titles such as Rick Stein’s Spain or Gino’s Italian Escape fare well in bookshops and on Amazon as we seek to emulate that perfect dish served at the favourite little restaurante.



At home, laid neatly out on coffee tables or displayed on a prominent dining room shelf, such books evoke memories of escapism and convey lifestyle aspiration to invited dinner guests. It is likely, though, if Leith is correct in her observation, that the dish put before those guests has been gleaned via tablet or smartphone.

TV chef and food writer, Gizzi Erskine, whose latest cookbook Gizzi’s Healthy Appetite was released on 6 August disagrees with Leith.

She has been getting tens of pictures each day from fans of dishes from the book that they’ve tried. She said: “People are definitely cooking from my book. I won’t say I’m not surprised [by Leith’s comments]. I’ve done it myself when I’ve bought cookbooks and thought I’m definitely going to cook that but haven’t.

“But a lot of cookbooks now come with a lifestyle attached to it and I think that’s definitely something I’m offering with mine and because of that there’s more of a reason to do it. And that’s associated with social media too because people want to show off what they’ve done.

I get about 30 pictures a day on Instagram and Twitter from readers who have tried recipes. It’s really interesting to see which recipes they are trying. It’s good to know they are using it.”

Bea Carvalho, cookery buyer for Waterstones, said: “With so many recipes easily accessible and free online, cookery books need to be of high quality for customers to want to spend money on them.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi Photograph: Guardian

“In recent years, publishers have become more creative with the format and presentation of cookery books, with books like our 2012 book of the year, Polpo, setting the bar high in terms of design, and books by some of our bestselling authors like Yotam Ottolenghi and Nigel Slater looking better and better with each new title.



“That said, beautiful cookery books which lack achievable recipes and are purely aspirational rarely make the bestseller lists: there’s definitely a balance to be struck.”



She added: “At the moment many of our bestsellers are books on healthy eating, and while books like The Art of Eating Well (Hemsley & Hemsley) and A Modern Way to Cook (Anna Jones) are beautifully designed and photographed, that is not their only draw: I think people are buying them for their authors’ reputations, for sound advice and the many tempting recipes within which tap into current trends.



“And, in my opinion,” Carvalho concluded, “there’s always space for some oil splatter on even the most beautiful of cookery books.”

Sarah Lavelle, publishing director at Quadrille, which publishes the chefs Antonio Carluccio and Michel Roux Snr as well as James Martin , said: “For the last couple of decades I think people would buy the book on the strength of the photos.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Frying pan Turkish flat breads with spoon salad, from A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones. Photograph: Matt Russell/Guardian

“That is great, because people buy them as gifts as well. But at the same time, being an editor and working for what can be years with a food writer or cook, I would like to think people are cooking from them too because otherwise we are slaving away for nothing.”



But Lavelle maintained that recipe-based books were on the up again. One soon to be published, Posh Toast, has no named authors but has already sold well overseas. “It does have a colour picture for every single recipe. But it is recipe-based rather than personality-based,” she added.

Another is BIY – Bake it Yourself, by Richard Burr, the Great British Bake Off builder with the pencil behind his ear who made last year’s final. “Yes, it’s very beautiful and highly illustrated,” said Lavelle.



Anna Valentine, publishing director of non-fiction at Orion, said: “There is no doubt that cookery books have become more beautiful and aspirational objects than the practical black-and-white cookbooks of yore.” That was due to advances in printing, and pressure on publishers to deliver value, she said.



“For me, a successful cookbook is one that is pored over at bedtime as much as it’s used in the kitchen. I don’t think one necessarily negates the other, and indeed the online reviews we have had for our major cookery brands, like The Hairy Bikers, Davina McCall and Madeleine Shaw tell us that our cookbooks are well loved and used, with readers engaging with the recipes, cooking them at home and writing openly about their favourites.”

