by Ruth Greb

Created on: September 26, 2008   Last Updated: August 03, 2011

Digital Cookbooks are great if you are on-line and looking for a recipe to make a certain item, but I would not want my computer anywhere near where I cook. I would need to print out that recipe and, if we like the food after it is prepared, I save that recipe in my recipe file. Then I would have it handy to make that item again. This is why recipe books should not be a thing of the past! Recipe books and recipe card files are going to always be with us. My recipe file occasionally gets revised and items I have not made in 50 years get dumped, but some recipes need to stay there because they do, on occasion, get made.

Many recipe books specialize on certain types of foods such as Mexican, Italian, Indian or desserts, breads, barbecue, etc. I think these books are great for those times you do want to cook a total meal from another culture. It is also nice to have a cookbook with all kinds of desserts. I have a Swedish cookbook that I purchased as a young bride in 1961 that had the recipes for foods I grew up with in a Swedish home. My Mom was not Swedish but my Dad was straight from the 'old country' and he taught her to make some of his favorites. Her cookbook had these recipes written down in faded handwriting. I was so happy to find an authentic Swedish cook book and, through the years, have written alterations of these recipes right in the book. My Swedish cook book has the general recipe and I have altered it to follow the process but change the flavors to what I was used to. That is just one example of needing the written cook book.

Another reason to need the written cook book is for the pictures. It gives you pictures on how the item should look when finished. If you make a cake from scratch that looks 6 inches high in the picture once two layers are put together and frosted, but yours looks like two pancakes, you have the picture to show you what it should look like and maybe figure what you did wrong in the process. The picture really helps in many ways because it also shows you ideas for garnishes or decorations. I remember an ad on TV back when I was a young bride in the early 60's of a young bride laying on the bed reading through her recipe book. You could hear her new hubby in the bathroom gargling. She hollers in to him about how did he like the dinner she had cooked him and he replies Honey, that was the biggest dumpling I have ever seen!' Then he came out to the bedroom as she reads from her cookbook, "poached oysters" and he returns to the bathroom. I have never forgotten that ad through all these years because every new bride, myself included, needs a cookbook to learn how to make foods to please her spouse. The big dumpling in this ad probably was not shown in a picture for the recipe or she would not have made it so large. Earlier recipe books did not have the nice pictures like the books today have.

Yes, we do need the printed recipe books today for the printed picture, for examples on presenttion and to make sure you are serving the food as it is supposed to look. It is not good to have a recipe book you are not willing to write in. Often, you only want to make half a recipe. It is nice to be able to calculate the new measurements in advance and write them in the book so there is no mistake when you are in the kitchen working and need to figure out what half a tablespoon comes out to or some similar measurement. A book you want to keep clean, not spill on and not write in is not a useful tool but one you can use where you cook, make written adjustments in is something that is a real value to any cook.

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