A cookbook is a kitchen reference publication that typically contains a collection of recipes. Modern versions may also include colorful illustrations and advice on purchasing quality ingredients or making substitutions. Cookbooks can also cover a wide variety topics, including cooking techniques for the home, recipes and commentary from famous chefs, institutional kitchen manuals, and cultural commentary.

History[link]

Title page from an 18th century edition of Forme of Cury.

The earliest cookbooks on record seem to be mainly lists of recipes for what would now be called haute cuisine, and were often written primarily to either provide a record of the author's favorite dishes or to train professional cooks for banquets and upper-class, private homes. Many of these cookbooks, therefore, provide only limited sociological or culinary value, as they leave out significant sections of ancient cuisine such as peasant food, breads, and preparations such as vegetable dishes too simple to warrant a recipe.

The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is De re coquinaria, written in Latin. An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research. An Apicius came to designate a book of recipes. The current text appears to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from 1483. It records a mix of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine, but with few details on preparation and cooking.^[1] An abbreviated epitome entitled Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by Vinidarius, "an illustrious man",^[2] was made in the Carolingian era.^[3] In spite of its late date it represents the last manifestation of the cuisine of Antiquity.

The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of al-Warraq (10th century) and al-Baghdadi (13th century).

Huou, Kublai Khan's court chef, wrote a collection of recipes called "The Important Things to Know About Eating and Drinking" in the 13th century; it includes mainly soups as well as household advice.^[4]

After a long interval, the first recipe books to be compiled in Europe since Late Antiquity started to appear in the late thirteenth century. All told, about a hundred survive, mostly fragmentary, from the age before printing.^[5] The earliest genuinely medieval recipes have been found in a Danish manuscript dating from around 1300, which in turn are copies of older texts that date back to the early 13th century or even earlier.^[6] Low and High German manuscripts are among the most numerous. Among them is Daz buch von guter spise ("The Book of Good Food") written c. 1350 in Würzberg and Kuchenmeysterey ("Kitchen Mastery"), the first printed German cook book from 1485.^[7] Two French collections are probably the most famous: Le Viandier ("The Provisioner") was compiled in the late 14th century by Guillaume Tirel, master chef for two French kings; and Le Menagier de Paris ("The Householder of Paris"), a household book written by an anonymous middle class Parisian in the 1390s.^[8] From Southern Europe there is the 14th century Catalan manuscript Llibre de Sent Soví ("The Book of Saint Sophia") and several Italian collections, notably the Venetian mid-14th century Libro per Cuoco,^[9] with its 135 recipes alphabetically arranged. The printed De honesta voluptate ("On honourable pleasure"), first published in 1475, is one of the first cookbooks based on Renaissance ideals, and, though it is as much a series of moral essays as a cookbook, has been described as "the anthology that closed the book on medieval Italian cooking".^[10] Recipes originating in England include the earliest recorded recipe for ravioli (1390s) and Forme of Cury, a late 14th century manuscript written by chefs of Richard II of England.^[11]

Types of cookbooks[link]

Cookbooks that serve as basic kitchen references (sometimes known as "kitchen bibles") began to appear in the early modern period. They provided not just recipes but overall instruction for both kitchen technique and household management. Such books were written primarily for housewives and occasionally domestic servants as opposed to professional cooks, and at times books such as The Joy of Cooking (USA), La bonne cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange (France), The Art of Cookery (UK, USA), Il cucchiaio d'argento (Italy), and A Gift to Young Housewives (Russia) have served as references of record for national cuisines. Related to this class are instructional cookbooks, which combine recipes with in-depth, step-by-step recipes to teach beginning cooks basic concepts and techniques. In vernacular literature, people may collect traditional recipes in family cookbooks.

International and ethnic cookbooks fall into two categories: the kitchen references of other cultures, translated into other languages; and books translating the recipes of another culture into the languages, techniques, and ingredients of a new audience. The latter style often doubles as a sort of culinary travelogue, giving background and context to a recipe that the first type of book would assume its audience is already familiar with.

Professional cookbooks are designed for the use of working chefs and culinary students and sometimes double as textbooks for culinary schools. Such books deal not only in recipes and techniques, but often service and kitchen workflow matters. Many such books deal in substantially larger quantities than home cookbooks, such as making sauces by the liter or preparing dishes for large numbers of people in a catering setting. While the most famous of such books today are books like Le guide culinaire by Escoffier or The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America, such books go at least back to medieval times, represented then by works such as Taillevent's Viandier and Chiquart d'Amiço's Du fait de cuisine.

Single-subject books, usually dealing with a specific ingredient, technique, or class of dishes, are quite common as well; indeed, some imprints such as Chronicle Books have specialized in this sort of book, with books on dishes like curries, pizza, and simplified ethnic food. Popular subjects for narrow-subject books on technique include grilling/barbecue, baking, outdoor cooking, and even recipe cloning.

Community cookbooks (also known as compiled, regional, charitable, and fund-raising cookbooks) are a unique genre of culinary literature. Community cookbooks focus on home cooking, often documenting regional, ethnic, family, and societal traditions, as well as local history.^[12] Gooseberry Patch has been publishing community-style cookbooks since 1992 and built their brand on this community.

Cookbooks can also document the food of a specific chef (particularly in conjunction with a cooking show) or restaurant. Many of these books, particularly those written by or for a well-established cook with a long-running TV show or popular restaurant, become part of extended series of books that can be released over the course of many years. Popular chef-authors throughout history include people such as Julia Child, James Beard, Nigella Lawson, Edouard de Pomiane, Jeff Smith, Emeril Lagasse, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Katsuyo Kobayashi, and possibly even Apicius, the semi-pseudonymous author of the Roman cookbook De re coquinaria, who shared a name with at least one other famous food figure of the ancient world.

While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by the main ingredient of the dishes, Japanese cookbooks usually group them by cooking techniques (e.g., fried foods, steamed foods, and grilled foods). Both styles of cookbook have additional recipe groupings such as soups, sweets.

Famous cookbooks[link]

Famous cookbooks from the past, in chronological order, include:

• De re coquinaria (The Art of Cooking) (late 4th / early 5th century) by Apicius
• Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) (10th century) by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq
• Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) (1226) by Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi
• Liber de Coquina (The Book of Cookery) (late 13th / early 14th century) by two unknown authors from France and Italy
• Forme of Cury (14th century) by the Master Cooks of King Richard II of England
• Viandier (14th century) by Guillaume Tirel alias Taillevent
• De honesta voluptate et valetudine (1475) by Bartolomeo Platina - the first cookbook printed in a native language (Italian) in 1487
• The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight Opened by Kenelm Digby (1669)
• The Compleat Housewife (first American edition 1742) by Eliza Smith
• The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse
• Hjelpreda I Hushållningen För Unga Fruentimber (1755) by Cajsa Warg
• Le Cuisinier Royal (1817) by Alexandre Viard
• Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845) by Eliza Acton
• Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) by Mrs Beeton
• El Cocinero Puerto - Riqueño 1859 (author unknown)
• La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891) by Pellegrino Artusi
• The Epicurean (1894) by Charles Ranhofer
• The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) by Fannie Merritt Farmer
• The Settlement Cook Book (1901) and 34 subsequent editions by Lizzie Black Kander
• Various cookbooks (between 1903 and 1934) by Auguste Escoffier
• The Joy of Cooking (1931) by Irma Rombauer
• Larousse Gastronomique (1938)
• The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954) by Alice B. Toklas
• Cooking with the Chinese Flavor (1956) and subsequent books by Lin Tsuifeng ("Mrs. Lin Yutang")
• Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) by Julia Child
• Helen Gurley Brown's Single Girl's Cookbook (1969) by Helen Gurley Brown
• The Fanny and Johnnie Cradock Cookery Programme (1970) by Fanny and Johnnie Cradock
• Diet for a Small Planet (1971) by Frances Moore Lappé
• Moosewood Cookbook (1978) by Mollie Katzen
• "The French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook (2010) by Mireille Guiliano

Usage outside the world of food[link]

The term cookbook is sometimes used metaphorically to refer to any book containing a straightforward set of already tried and tested "recipes" or instructions for a specific field or activity, presented in detail so that the users who are not necessarily expert in the field can produce workable results. Examples include a set of circuit designs in electronics, a book of magic spells, or The Anarchist Cookbook, a set of instructions on destruction and living outside the law. O'Reilly Media publishes a series of books about computer programming named the Cookbook series, and each of these books contain hundreds of ready to use, cut and paste examples to solve a specific problem in a single programming language.

See also[link]

• Food writing
• Gourmet Museum and Library

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adamson, Melitta Weiss Food in Medieval Times. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT. 2004. ISBN 0-313-32147-7
• Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays. Melitta Weiss Adamson (editor). Garland, New York. 1995. ISBN 0-8153-1345-4
• Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays. edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson (editor). Routledge, New York. 2002. ISBN 0-415-92994-6
• What’s the Recipe? - Our hunger for cookbooks., Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 2009.

External links[link]

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Table of Contents

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Cookbooks

• The Food and Cookery Collection of the Fales Library at NYU
• Books for Cooks - a learning resource on the history of cookery books from the British Library
• Feeding America at Michigan State University Digital Library -- a collection of influential early American cookbooks, including a large number of books specializing in immigrant cuisine
• Home Economics (including cookbooks) at Project Gutenberg
• Menus and Cookbooks at The New York Public Library
• Bibliography of Creole & Cajun Cookbooks at Nola Cuisine

Greg Plitt
Born	Greg Plitt Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Height	6 ft 1 in (1.85 m)[1]
Hair color	Brown
Eye color	Green
Weight	195 lb (88 kg)[1]
Website
http://www.gregplitt.com/

Greg Plitt is an American fitness model and actor.

Modeling career[link]

Greg Plitt has modeled for Under Armour, Old Navy Jeans, Calvin Klein, Modell's and Skimpies, among others, and has done covers and/or editorials for Maxim, AXL, American Health & Fitness, Flaunt, Men's Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Men's Health, FitnessRx for Men, Instinct Magazine, and Men's Exercise, among others.

Plitt is a global spokesperson/model for Thierry Mugler's Angel Men and ICE*Men men's fragrances. He has done TV commercials for Old Spice Body Wash, ESPN's Great Outdoor Games, Under Armour, MTV, Zoli Sinks, Gold's Gym Power Flex, Bowflex and has lately taken acting roles. Images of his body were used to create Dr. Manhattan's muscular physique in the 2009 film Watchmen.^[2]

He has also appeared in several movies and television shows (see below).

Personal life[link]

Plitt comes from a family of four, and has an older sister who attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.^[1] Plitt is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York,^[1] Class of 2000, and is both Airborne and Ranger qualified.

Plitt says he has been a fitness buff since his dad bought a home gym when Plitt was in sixth grade; he was further inspired after seeing how his older sister changed after her first year in the United States Naval Academy.^[3] Plitt has described his work as a certified physical trainer to his work training military recruits:

"That transformation that you see when someone becomes a soldier," he says, "many of them come in with real bad attitudes. They’re tough guys on the street and nobody’s going to tell them what to do. Then one day, they’ll come to you crying, saying, ‘I need someone to talk to.’ All of sudden they start changing their ways and they become the men they always wanted to be. Then other soldiers start looking up to them as role models. Then they’re proud and they hold their heads high. That’s more gratifying than anything I’ve done. That’s what’s so cool about it — to be able to train somebody and transform them and bring out all of the great qualities that everyone possesses."^[3]

Filmography[link]

^[1][4]

Other appearances[link]

^[1][4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Greg Plitt at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview on The Gregory Mantell Show
• Interview with Matt Weik for BodyBuilding.com, 4 June 2009 (accessed 28 August 2009)
• "Greg Plitt from West Point to the West Coast" Interview with Marty Roberson for MyRealityMagazine.com, 30 June 2009 (accessed 28 August 2009)
• "Former Army Ranger Greg Plitt Joins Bravo’s “Work Out.” Can He Handle the Truth (of Hollywood)?" by Chris Mann for Muscle & Body Magazine, date unknown (accessed 28 August 2009)