Books For Cooks
What’s yours worth?
With the amount of publicity chefs now receive it was inevitable that some of the thousands of cookbooks written over the years would sooner or later become collectors items and it would seem that is now the case.
I have collected cookery books for many years, the majority are geared towards professional chefs whilst others are tied in with travel. I was thinking about how many of them I would actually buy again if my house burnt down and it probably wouldn’t run to much more than a dozen. Some do not age well at all, particularly those of the 70’s and 80’s. I have many pre dating the sixties and although the recipes are somewhat ‘dodgy’ they still bear a certain relevence today. The problem with the eighties was that the food was very much style over content and calling it style is being generous.
Certain books have ‘instant classic’ written all over them as soon as they are published; Marco Pierre White’s ‘White Heat’, Elizabeth David’s ’French Country Cooking’, Thomas Keller’s ‘The French Laundry’, almost anything by Simon Hopkinson and more recently Giorgio Locatelli’s ‘Made in Italy’ immediately spring to mind. These books have/will stand the test of time and, as long as time (and you) have been good to the them then they could be worth more than you might think.
The problem here is the condition, most cookbooks are bought for the sole use of copying recipes from, they are held open with the nearest heavy object, chocolate stained, coffee cup ringed with pages folded over for ease of finding. Any of these will seriously harm your chances of making any money from them, if, unlike me you wish to.
My advice would be to start afresh, keep an eye out for potential classics and look after them, write the recipe down and keep the book out of the kitchen. Want to know where to start? I reckon Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s latest offering ‘Beyond the Great Wall’ will be right up there if the previous two in the series are anything to go by.
Remember, you read it here first!
Miles
there are also some very obscure cookery books that are collectable as first editions.
Very speciailist, perhaps dealing with a small country or region.
They tend to be small print runs on discerning publishers. Because they are actually ‘quality’ books as opposed to simply recipe books they remain of great interest.
Don’t forget Mrs Beeton either
Rod
April 30, 2008 @ 7:19 am
Miles,
All my books are dog eared and splattered with tea etc so I’ll not be hoping for much….. unless that is, the future discerning buyer actively seeks antique MC blogger’s memorabilia
Cid
April 30, 2008 @ 8:10 am
Rod,
Wouldn’t mind a first edition Mrs B for my birthday
Just an idea.
Miles
April 30, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
Cid,
I reckon you’d get more for the dog eared books than for anything relating to me-look how cheap my brother is
Miles
April 30, 2008 @ 1:50 pm
Miles,
You’ll have to try not to show your disappointment when he gives you the complete Womans Weekly recipe collection
Cid
April 30, 2008 @ 3:31 pm
Miles
I wasn’t thinking of spending over £1,000
April 30, 2008 @ 3:34 pm
Rod,
I was!!!
April 30, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
You wouldn’t be if you actually sold collectable books for a living
April 30, 2008 @ 5:52 pm