by Ali Hutchings

Created on: November 22, 2009

Printed cookbooks still have a long way to go before they become a thing of the past.

In fact as long as the phenomenonof celebrity chefs, competitive cookery TV shows and Jamie Oliver all over the Sainsburys' ads continues there will be a following trend of associated print. Both Delia and Jamie are in WHSmith's hardback chart and we're still five weeks from Christmas after all!

And while I'm not one to doubt the virtues of the Internet in providing the odd recipe, you really need to have an idea of what you're looking for before you venture on-line for your inspiration. I recently threw a Halloween party and even with the fairly specific search criteria of "Halloween recipes" I was left wading through thousands of potential possibilities (and as half of them were from the US I couldn't have sourced all the ingredients in time if I'd wanted to!)

And speaking of US recipes, while the final product may look and sound delicious I live in fear of misinterpreting the mystic measurements they use across the pond (a "stick" of butter anyone?) and ending up with something not even vaguely approximating my intended culinary goal.

It might seem a little limiting to choose from a printed cookbook rather than the Internet but, when faced with the need to whip up a quick family meal or plan out a full menu to impress nearest and dearest, my mind copes best with a limited scope of possibilitiesand a lovely array of colour photos to whet the appetite. And I'm sure I can't be the only one.

I've tried, and often failed, to successfully use the Internet in the past to provide me with inspirational recipes. It's not that I don't believe the answers lie there within the combined web pages of the world, but that the sheer scope of information available is so vast. You can (and I have) literally spend hours looking and still not found the inspiration I was after.

If you already have an idea of what you want to cook the Internet is a wonderful resource and I'd lay money on the popularity of on-line recipes continuing to grow. It's a brilliant way of broadening our horizons to recipes we might not otherwise have found and gives us a 21st century way of swapping recipes like our mothers or grandmothers would have when we were children. But you really need the time to make it work for you.

As long as chefs are celebrities there'll be a market for their cookbooks. Chefs are celebrities because we love watching other people cook and taking away inspiration from what we see. As long as we want to be inspired there'll be a market for celebrity chefs and printed cookbooks.

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