The Cookbook Gift Guide That Covers EVERYONE You Know
What gift says “but really, make me dinner” better than a cookbook? Isn’t that why we give them every holiday season? Sure, your friend looooves to cook. But be honest: you’re in this for you. But giving a cookbook is harder than it seems. Is it about gifting something they’ll actually use or is it more of a coffee table trophy situation? Know thy audience. And since we at BA see every single new cookbook coming into this world, we have a pretty good idea of what’s out there, what’s actually cookable, beautiful, interesting, and gifty. These are the cookbooks we’d give this year, based on these very specific types of food people we know and love.
Photo by Alex Lau1/12For the person who binged Salt Fat Acid Heat the weekend it came out
You and I Eat the Same is an essay compilation that will engross you, open up your mind, and inspire a feeling of interconnectedness that softens that hard place inside of you. You know the place. The one that scowls at strangers and writes mean tweets sometimes. Before you wrap the book, read Osayi Endolyn’s “Fried Chicken Is Common Ground” so that you can bring it up the next time you see your giftee. This book covers a lot of bases—it’s a great gift for someone who loves to eat, consume food media, and learn about new cuisines. They don’t even have to be a person who cooks.
Photo by Alex Lau2/12For the person who keeps their sweet vermouth in the fridge
My life has greatly improved since I started making the Adonis from Apéritif. The classic, low-ABV cocktail combines sherry, sweet vermouth, and orange bitters. It’s easy, like most of the recipes in this fantastic new book, which rarely require more than four ingredients. I’d give Aperitif with a bottle of Lillet Rosé to the friend with a bar cart they don’t visit often enough, someone dipping their toes in the hosting waters, or the pal who keeps sweet vermouth in the fridge but could use some inspiration beyond Manhattans (St. Germain slushy, please). The writing is sharp and funny, the brief histories of certain alcohols are fascinating, and the snack recipes are irresistable (salt and vinegar popcorn, hello you). The most fun cocktail book of the year, easily.
Buy it: Apéritif: Cocktail Hour the French Way, $13 on Amazon
Photo by Alex Lau3/12For the baker with a bundt pan collection
I want to bake everything in Genius Desserts, and so will your friend who made you that three-layer birthday cake last year. Lazy cakes! Fancy tarts! Parsnip cake?! This is a huge array of dessert recipes from a multitude of voices across the food world, from Madhur Jaffrey’s fried stuffed dates (swoon) to Alice Medrich’s iconic cocoa brownies (fudge me up). I sort of wished they’d called it, Now That’s What I Call Dessert Vol. I, so I could look forward to a new volume for the next 46 years. But whatcha gonna do? You’re gonna bake Claire Ptak’s coffee cardamom walnut cakes and slowly make your way through every recipe in the sugar factory that was once called your kitchen.
Buy it: Food52 Genius Desserts: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Bake, $23 on Amazon
Photo by Alex Lau4/12For the person who collects restaurant pens
They see a restaurant list and they gotta hit every spot. This one is for them. A Very Serious Cookbook chronicles the recipes at New York’s Contra and Wildair with a chill, cool guy chef voice that makes you feel like some kind of natural wine slugging insider. Hell yeah I know what Trimoline is! Can’t wait to make that mandarin granita with popcorn mousse. 🧐 I love the impossible XO sauce, a secret recipe that refuses to give you the luxury of quantities. Fine, I’ll just come eat it at Wildair! Each recipe is introduced with an origin story that aspiring chefs can use as a textbook—see how friendship (aww), travel, a solid culinary education, and eating out a whole damn lot can spark unlikely but ingenious flavor combinations. Restaurant cookbooks can feel like dispatches from a toqued-up distant planet; this one beams you into the UFO and takes you there.
Buy it: A Very Serious Cookbook: Contra Wildair, $45 on Amazon
Photo by Alex Lau5/12For the hypebeast who tracks down niche pasta-themed t-shirts
Buffalo Zine is an indie fashion magazine from the UK, and its latest issue, “Fashion’s Kitchen,” is a hardcover book containing some of the craziest photoshoots using food I’ve ever seen. It will captivate you with a spread of Santa in various forms of sexy off-season repose, like drinking a poolside nativity negroni (I KNOW), and a large quantity of oddball celebrity recipes you’ll find tempting to recreate, like Stevie Nicks’s Fiesta Dip. This is a piece of art. It is also hard to track down, which is why I’m ordering it from overseas for my most hard-to-buy for friends.
Buy it: Buffalo Zine: Fashion’s Kitchen, £35.00 from Antenne Books
Photo by Alex Lau6/12For the person who packs their suitcase with tinned fish souvenirs
Everyone at BA loved Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta, the tiny but mighty cookbook that uses three simple, fatty ingredients in exceptional ways. At our cookbook club dinner, the standout recipes were cucumber and green tomato salad with avocado, fish sauce, cilantro, and lime; almond butter cookies with chocolate; Bagna cauda salad with optional truffle upgrade; spicy almond crack; and the pork meatballs with farro, hazelnuts, and sage. The recipes are fab, and that’s what we’re here for, but the writing is so damn funny you’ll want to read it cover-to-cover while snacking on toast bites with basil, anchovy, sambal oelek, and a single peanut (a “fucked-up Frankensnack”). Salty fishes forever!
Buy it: Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta: A Vegetarian Cookbook, Kind Of, $18 on Amazon
Photo by Alex Lau7/12For the soul, hold the chicken soup
Extra Helping has a mission: Get you to cook not just for yourself, your family, the occasional dinner party, but also for those who need it most—your community. This humble cookbook (no styled shiny photos of styled roast chickens here) is organized by those in need of a warm meal. “Food for expanding families” includes musings on motherhood alongside tofu skewers with roasted carrot romesco. If you know anyone who’s been recently “rearranged and relocated,” like a new neighbor or coworker, make them a “life is upside down cake.” This book has soul and spirit. Give it to someone who does, too, with a jar of ready-to-spoon cookie dough (“Food for cheer”).
Photo by Alex Lau8/12For the dinner party guest who asks ‘what are you reading lately?‘
The press didn’t show enough love to chef Ed Lee’s memoir Buttermilk Graffiti this year. But I’m telling you, Lee is a gifted storyteller and those first few chapters will grab you and keep you riveted all the way to the end. I won’t give anything away, but some wild stuff goes down during his crack of dawn shift at a dingy New York diner. For chef fans and memoir readers, nonfiction fans, literary folks—this is the recipe-less food book I’d wrap up and give with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon.
Buy it: Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine, $12 on Amazon
Photo by Alex Lau9/12For the person in a time of change, chaos, or general existential dread
This person needs some order in their life. Something to give them purpose. Or just some good food. Repertoire is about getting into the groove of things and dinner recipes that become members of the family, they show up at the table so often. A savory, creamy onion and olive tart sounds good, right? Brown butter gnocchi with crispy prosciutto makes the whole world happy. Candy pork is a dish I would not say no to if it showed up in front of me right about now. Repertoire is a collection of real life, instant crowd-pleasers, with some process photos that help see you through. For that, it’s a great cookbook gift for a newer cook, or someone in need of a recipe box refresh. Which is pretty much all of us, right?
Photo by Alex Lau10/12For the shameless cookbook trophy collector
Pastry chef Will Goldfarb’s shiny gold-clothed Room for Dessert is a coffee table cookbook of the most enviable kind. (It might be silk? I can’t stop touching it.) INSIDE, it’s a compendium of Goldfarb’s crazy beautiful modernist creations whose sophistication doesn’t match their silly names and the writing’s wackadoo sense of humor, a wonderful contradiction. For example, Chocobubbles 4 Evah is a chocolate mousse with a twisted “lime gel” garnish that looks like a lobster’s exoskeleton, something called “kluwak creme,” and cookie crumbles. WOW-ZA. Contrary to my experience, “Loneliness” is chocolate gelato with cream bubbles and cashew praline cake, a white bulb-looking thing with transparent shards of yellowed mango petals. The introductions to recipes are like prose poems; the whole book is a wild escape into a sugar-altered mind. Good stuff.
Buy it: Room for Dessert, $47 on Amazon
Photo by Alex Lau11/12For the friend who named their SCOBY
No shame in the rotting food game. We love it here! The Noma Guide to Fermentation is every kombucha-brewing, sauerkraut-aging, sourdough-feeding, funky-food lover’s must-have holiday gift this year. Even if they’ll never make lacto-fermented green gooseberries, they gotta have this book. It’s aspirational, impossibly cool, and unabashedly nerdy. Don’t forget to tack on a nice crock or a vinegar-aging barrel to take this gift to the next level.
Photo by Alex Lau12/12For the person who wants to start a cookbook club in 2019
Do it already! Follow Bon Appétit’s lead and start with Season, which will challenge, enlighten, and delight you. The pineapple-serrano gin cocktail has a special place in my heart, but the Bombay frittata is right up there too. Whoever hosts the cookbook club needs to make the garam masala-grilled pork chops, obviously. For dessert? The spicy chocolate-chip cookies, no question.
Buy it: Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food, $32 on Amazon
All products featured on Bonappetit.com are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
