I have all of the Two Fat Ladies cookbooks, thought they are more for entertainment reading as I have not found the recipes tempting. I have their joint books as well as their individual ones. I even have the more obscure Jennifer Pattersons diary and Feast Days.

And I have some Nigella lawson cookbooks: Bites, Feast,Express, Kitchen and of course her Christmas cookbook. Again, more because I enjoy reading her writing than the actual recipes. And I have one random church cookbook that a truck driver that came through my workplace was selling for his churches youth group for 20 dollars. I have made some of the recipes out of it, but not in a few years. I just bought it to support him.

Sixty five cookbooks, not counting small pamphlet style or saved magazines. Those could easily go over a hundred. Five notebooks with favorites and recipes printed from online. One more notebook with printed ideas to try. Two file boxes, one mine and one my MIL's.

When we traveled, I bought cookbooks as souvenirs.

How does one know? I have at least 15, probably more, bread and baking books. Including ones from childhood, and one I've never opened, I think I have 6-7 general cookbooks, like Joy. Probably about 20 Jewish cookbooks, including several baking books. Then there are the rest.... I'm not sure that I have a hundred, but I might.

I find them useful as references and inspiration, but I find better recipes in blogs than in books or publications. OTOH, once in awhile, I'll find a good recipe on a product insert or neighborhood circular. Mostly, i just cook, and if I like the outcome I write it down.

I used to type up family and favorite recipes and print them out to use. Since my current computer and printer get along like cats and dogs, I've taken to using a simple recipe app that also has an online interface for copying recipes from the computer that are instantly in the iPad app. I actually find the iPad easier to cook from.

I was just looking at my collection and thinking I need to get rid of half. Maybe 100. Some absurdly specific - I have a whole book on roesti. Some must have sentimental value - I never, meaning never ever, consult the Betty Crocker or Ladies Home League books, and it’s unclear who they have sentimental value for, because neither SWMBO nor I recall where they came from. Some were clearly bought because I was hungry - for the pictures, you know. Some appear to be my attempt to acquire encyclopedic knowledge - does one really need to know every possible way to cook every possible fish? Some I can’t even read - I’m sure that Chinese dish would be very authentic, if I took the trouble to translate every character. Some are quasi-celebrity books - think Anthony Bourdain not Rachael Ray. Some promise passage to another time or consciousness - pre-war France or Zen nirvana. Some reflect virtue signaling - the organic, healthy, low fat, low carb, low calorie, gluten-free, non artificial breeding, ecologically sustainable, vegan, no cultural appropriation, ethnically authentic cookbooks, the intersection of which is a wild dandelion cooked with a magnifying glass or whatever. Some are collections - if you buy XYZ’s first book, do you really have to buy all the rest of the series? Some are historical or philosophical ruminations through food - did you know all of human history is explained by salt? Some are tables of facts and figures - like the phone book and the Encyclopedia Brittanica and similar pre-internet references. Some merely display how interesting, or insightful, or well traveled, or refined, the owner wishes to appear - like collecting luggage stickers or passport stamps. Gosh, that does it! I’m cleaning house, mercilessly. I definitely don’t need TWO roesti cookbooks.

I have no clue how many I have. Bunches of Taste of Home along with years' worths of magazines. Pamphlets, flyers, 2 Jamie Olivers that were gifts, piles of miscellaneous, piles of notebook pages handwritten, magazine pages, about 50 saved to my phone and at least double that on my Chrome bookmark bar ... And the only one I really use is my BH&G my Mom gave me on my 19th birthday. It's falling apart.

Years ago I counted mine at around 140. It's likely over 200 now, and I admit to needing to thin them out. Every so often I think of one and do enjoy pulling it out to look over again. I still say some of my favorites are from Sheila Lukins and Julee Rossen, the Silver Palate girls. My mom gave me the Silver Palate Cookbook so long ago, and I followed that with several of their others...Silver Palate Good Times, New Basics, and the ones Sheila Lukins did solo (Ten, Celebrate, USA Cookbook).

The internet has definitely made an impact on my cookbook purchasing...a good thing! However, I heard Ina Garten's new book will be released next Month, so I'll likely get that one which will bring my total of hers to 12. IDK, I guess we all just do what works for us.

I really purged when we moved 3 1/2 years ago! I end up getting most of my recipes on line. Even those, I had probably 6" of printed out recipes and just chucked them when packing (I think that was the point that I was saying "just F**k it! Get rid of it!"

I do, still have about a dozen or so that I don't use much and a couple that I'm using during this (of many) heat waves. The air fryer and the instant pot book.

60-70 cookbooks. I purged some when I moved, but a few new ones have crept in. I'll take a photo when I get up tomorrow. I focus on foods from around the world. Great to page thru for ideas.

When I redid the kitchen 4 years ago I took out 90% of the upper cupboards; They were too high to be of much use to me and were actually blocking the view and didn't belong where they were. However, they did contain way too many cookbooks and magazines that now had nowhere to live... so out they went. I now have about 15 books plus 2 binders and a few pamphlet-type thingies residing on a top shelf in the pantry. As it is, with the exception of the black binder, I rarely use any of them now. (The black binder has recipes I use frequently and like to have in BIG print.)

I think I also have in the range of 30-50, but I only have about five or six here in Cathedral City. Originally I brought those here so that guests might use them, but now we have decided that we will not be renting this house - mainly due to restrictions placed on us by the city, which has put a moratorium on all new vacation rentals here. So far, I have not used any of the cookbooks that I brought here, but I might.

I had a good purge last year when we moved. There are some that I have to keep. I have one book on sauces that is invaluable, even if rarely used. For example 3 days to make a sauce bordelaise that gets gobbled up in a couple of minutes.....but great. Also our tastes have changed. We don't often thicken sauces with flour any more..... but I still have a bookcase full.

I have several in a bookcase. I was just thinking the other day I should get rid of some. I love physical books, I don't use them regularly, but it is nice paging through them.

The books were all picked up at book and yard sales. Our most ecstatic acquisition was leaving the huge book sale and outside the parking lot were a couple of boxes marked Free. There were 2 very old Julia Child cookbooks in there!

A bunch, maybe a hundred or so, some specialty , like a lasagna cookbook, a biscotti one, lots of artisan bread cookbooks before I went low carb.

I rarely use them but do use my huge recipe file folders and wouldn't mind having more cookbooks that have modern techniques and a wider range of interesting ingredients particularly using paleo curiosities.

I have too many to count. My "go to" cookbooks are in my island -- all of Ina Garten's and Anna Pump's (both favorites of mine), local church cookbooks, a couple of restaurant cookbooks -- I probably have close to 50 on those three shelves alone and then the cabinet above the refrigerator holds more, a shelf in the larder holds still more and then the bookcases upstairs hold even more PLUS there is one shelf in the living room bookcases that I now have cookbooks on. I have a nice collection of 20/30s cookbooks as I live in a 20s house and like to see recipes from that era. One of my goals this week is to organize the island cookbook shelves a little better.

Without doing an actual count. *Gasp* I have added "purge cookbooks" to my to-do list.

I am thinking of an area I have with never used cookbooks that a friend gave me. Now that I think about it, she was purging her cookbooks and I ended up with them.

You are all right about those church cookbooks, they are the best. I am also keeping the Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks with the nice checkered cover, my WWII Victory cookbook, where I learned to cook as a teen, Paula Deen, Martha Stewart and The Joy of cooking must remain.

Just remembering some Junior League cookbooks I have that are treasures from Pasadena and San Francisco.

^^ My JL 'Pasadena Prefers' is one of my favorites....and one of the few cookbooks I still own and refer to. I got rid of most when I downsized 12 years ago :-) I kept only a few that were just basics - Joy of Cooking, my mom's inherited BHG with all her handwritten notes, Martha Stewart. The few others are either local publications, two Silver Palates and my British cooking book. And I have a big card file, a notebook and overstuffed folder of clippings, recipes from friends, grocery store handouts, etc.

I do most of my recipe perusing online :-) Just no need in this day and age for a lot of books when one has the Internet available!

I purged when we moved 7 years ago. A quick look in my cabinet shows me maybe 60-70 now. And a few magazines with holiday meal type recipes, a couple that are 'make it now - bake it later' type dishes. Three binders where I made an attempt to save all my clipped recipes from over the years.

There was a broom/mop type built in with the kitchen cupboards when we bought this house, and 8 steps away in the laundry room that also has built-ins - a full utility closet. I had shelves put in the kitchen broom cabinet and that holds my cookbooks now. There are a few with old trusted favorites in them, but more often than not when wanting to try something I go to my computer and look for ingredients I either have, or know we will enjoy.

I don't know why its so hard to let go of the cookbooks, but it is. I know where each came from, whether a gift or something I bought. And I'm sure when new I sat and read them like a novel, although not recently.

300+ maybe? Only about 10% we purchased. Mostly second hand. All were gifts for the most part. Should have culled when we moved a dozen years ago but we had a packing party and overwhelmed being full time working. Picked up a few dozen lobsters and invited friends over to help pack. A few thousand+ fiction and non. Collected wine boxes for weeks. Perfect size for books and trinket smalls. (a neighboring lobster wholesaler opened up to the neighborhood Saturday mornings for 5$ culls, one claw. So much was packed that day and a big help)...duh, free lobster dinner. And a party is hard to resist.

NYC loft for 25 yrs we had many house guests over the years. Common visitor gift was wine, cookbooks, art books, or kitchen gadgets. Seldom looked at the cookbooks, so I could easily pare down to a dozen or two.

Most valued are the 3-4 years of Food and Wine mags. Just the November and December issues I saved. '89-'92?. Pull them out every year, the 2inch shelf space they take up is so minimal... complete with notations/changes and grocery lists tucked in. So many of those recipes are now family holiday tradition.

Time to purge books but not really in the mood. Matching sox is priority, and planning the next meal. 😂😜

I love cookbooks and printed recipes. I make notes in the margins of substitutions and changes. I usually make the recipe as written the first time, then will sub and change.

I love following a recipe as it moves across country. West to East and South to North. I have bought cookbooks at estate sales that are stuffed with clippings and notes by the recipes.

If I am getting bored with what I am cooking, I will pull a book out and read through it until I find something to try. Even fried chicken, which I consider basic and a no recipe meal, has all kinds of additions and changes as you move around the country.

I will never purge, just keep adding. I just got through taping the worst back together with mailing tape, lol.

I need to find Joy of Cooking, Julia Child, and Ina Garten's cookbooks at estate sales when I feel comfortable going again.

I noted earlier that I had purged and mostly get recipes on line, but one thing I have been doing is, I got a recipe saver binder and am writing out family recipes that are in my head to give to my girls. Also insert later favorites that I've played with such as garden goodies (both girls are interested in starting a garden!)

I'm feeling sad for all those purged cookbooks. I know a lot of cookbooks aren't really that good to begin with (not including the ones that have culture and story in them), but it still makes me sad. I love books. I have way too many books of all kinds, but I still feel bad for the unloved and unmissed discarded ones. :( sniff

AS a few others have said, I have hundreds, too many to count. I have seasonal cookbooks and many that were gifts, including some old "Frugal Gourmet" books that were gifts from another Cooking forum member back when we still did swaps. I have all of my Grandma's old Farm Journal cookbooks and her most used book "The Modern Family Cookbook" by Meta Given. I also have the 1969 Betty Crocker cookbook she bought me when I married my first husband, back in 1974. And, of course, I have 3 large binders with recipes from the many years I've spent here.

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say at least 200, probably far more.

Annie

About 170 here not including CI magazines and such. I purged about 10 years ago and about all the newer celebrities were donated. I really like finding older cookbooks that are still relevant and not faddish. The ones I use most are in an open upper cabinet and I always have 3-4 sitting on a stand next to the couch to look through. Those rotate depending on my mood/weather.

A handful of years ago the Library book sale had 2 tables of cookbooks. Typically I'm lucky if there is a box and I had to cut myself off at around 30. I was told they mostly came from the same donor. There were so many good cookbooks in the collection I wish I knew them.

I also have too many to count. Some are still used regularly, but most aren't touched anymore! :( I used to know them so well that I could pull the right book for the recipe or technique I wanted, but now I have trouble finding what I'm looking for. :p And my friend just sent me a new Marcella Hazan 'Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking'. :)

I use those 1/2" wide Post-It notes for markers in my cookbooks.

A head's up! Some years ago we downsized. Little did I know until later that some cook books have value. Before donating any books hop on Amazon and check the pricing of used books you plan to donate. Too late I discovered that five of the cook books I donated had considerable value. Amazon would have purchased them from me.

"My JL 'Pasadena Prefers' is one of my favorites...."

Agree and The California Heritage Cookbook and California Sizzles are a couple other favorites from the JL of Pasadena.

Far too many to count! I love and collect what I call 'regional' cookbooks, those put out by churches and organizations. I enjoy just reading them, I really don't care if they have any 'good' recipes in them or not. So finding a really good recipe in one is considered a bonus. And a number of my 'go-to' recipes do come from these books.

One thing I don't have, nor do I have any desire to have, are celebrity cookbooks. (Wait, I think there might be one Paula Deen magazine somewhere.) But no, no James Beard, Julia Childs, any of that stuff. When the Betty Crocker cookbook I got when I first married many years ago fell apart, I replaced it. But the newer model isn't near as good, so it sits somewhere, basically unused. Joy of Cooking was my cooking bible for many years, and I still keep it in a handy location.

Rusty

Rusty, your mention of Betty Crocker made me think of my very first cookbook. I was only nine and my mom got it for me. I was so excited. I still have it but somehow the cover was lost. No idea how that happened.

perhaps we ought to start a purge a cookbook thread and do trades ...

No sniffles here for some of my cookbooks I now longer need or like. Pulled out three I briefed but set aside a while ago. They should go to someone that will appreciate the content. One is so basic that a young cook will find it valuable. One is so popular but I don't agree with some of the methods. 50$ on amazon. I will not publicly bash the author as I like all other writings from him.

One large collection has such bad printing but we really like the recipes...I'm sure I got a bad copy. The type is such a pale yellow it is so hard to read. (keep meaning to look for it in person to see if my copy is a flawed run)...Ruth Reichl

I do like my vintage collection. Marcella Hazan's two small paperbacks were my first. Read them cover to cover back in '86 when I moved to NYC from Italy. Such a brilliant recipe writer. So visual. No pictures needed. That is rare.

Picked up David Chang's Momofuku at a friends home and ordered when I got home. Read cover to cover but that interests me having been to his restaurants many times. Always going back and flipping through. That may be my last personal purchased 5 yrs ago. Scratch cooks use what is in the fridge, crisper, freezer.

Using a CSA or a Misfits, or a home garden, we need some cleaver adjustments to recipes. I like a cooking challenge, so a recipe is just a starting point.

About 72 not counting various small (thick pamphlet on down) ones. If I counted those it would be about 100. Of those, there are about a dozen that I really use - about 8 where I know that any recipe I try from them will be very good: e.g. Olive Trees and Honey, Classic Home Desserts and about 4 others where the recipes are less reliable but that I grew up using so they contain some T&T favorite recipes even if they also have some clunkers.

I did get rid of quite a few recipe books in a purge a few years ago but the shelves could still use some purging.

Well, I am a from scratch cook, but I like my meals to turn out the exact same way every time I make something. I always use a recipe. If not a recipe, it is still made the exact same way we like it. If I have to experiment, as when I came up with my barbeque sauce, I measured and kept careful track until it was what I wanted. I now follow that recipe every time. I only buy what I need for the week, to make the meals I want that week.

I try new recipes, but the ones I am sure I like, I keep using those. If I want lasagna, I want the one I like, exactly the way I made it all the times before.

Chloebud, are we twins? My mother gave me the Betty Crocker (loose leaf edition) when I was nine too. :) It's held together with gaffer's tape and very yellow, but it has pride of place on the shelf with all it's tatters bits of paper added making it fat. :)

One of my favorite cookbooks currently is a coffee table book. Not just a big hard back. You could add legs and use it as a coffee table, or at least a cocktail table. I've only made one or two recipes from it, but that involves scrawling it on an envelope out of the recycling. It's too big to even type out of. It does sit on the (large) coffee table. I don't have a big enough shelf. :)

Do any of you have problem cookbooks? What do you do to deal with them? Do you get them repaired? Put falling apart ones in boxes? Keep pamphlets in sleeves in binders? Magazine files? Stashed under the guest bed?

I have more than I can easily count - about a dozen or so that I actually use on a shelf in the kitchen, and the rest are collectibles like vintage BH&G, Betty Crocker, and others of that ilk,on a bookshelf in the LR, and a few storage boxes of vintage pamphlets/booklets.

I collected mainly for the illustrations, but some are well used, like a Bre'r Rabbit molasses booklet from (I think) the 30s/40s and a walnut growers pamphlet of recipes from the 50s/60s.

I have a falling apart Betty Crocker looseleaf from the 60s that gets used regularly. My smaller broken ones go in plastic bags, but I think I may eventually have to find a replacement for that big BC book. Ebay & Alibris are a good sources for things like that.

Some of my most often used recipes are on stained, tattered pieces of paper stuck to the side of my fridge with magnets ☺️

Too many to consider....plus stacks of old Gourmet, Bon Appetite and Food and Wine. I was digging in a pile for a particular recipe, and found an old Terrace Hill Cookbook....Dave you likely have one.
And Dave....that one with the 3 notebook rings....please look at again....that might have come from an organization I belonged to and helped edit and compile.
I am mostly not using a cookbook but for inspiration....when I use a recipe or find one I think I might like to try, I type it out and put it in a file on my computer.

As I said, I have too many, including this one, the first cookbook I ever owned. It was a Christmas gift in 1964, when I was 9 years old, from my cousin Ann Fessler. She was "big Ann" and I was "little Ann", LOL. She used to send me her hand me down clothes too, and her adoptive Mom (Grandma's Aunt) was a nurse, so she had some nice clothes. I remember a cowgirl skirt made of real suede with fringe, I LOVED that skirt. (grin) Anyway, she sent me the kid's cookbook, the big Betty Crocker was from my Grandmother when I got married in 1974.

This, clearly, was the most used recipe:

The book was so well used that it's falling apart, both my girls used it too.

Annie

I have too many to count. I have been collecting since I was in high school and I am now 85! Love just reading them.

Sue

I make that cocoa fudge cake often!

@annie1992 Our "Moosewood Cookbook" (8 1/2 by 12 paperback) was falling apart. That's one where some of the recipes are family favorites but others I don't much care for. My husband took it to Office Max where they punched the holes and added the wire to make it into a spiral bound book. That's a good solution for the ~200 page book. It does require enough margin for binding to be cut off and the spiral holes (a bit more than 1/4 inch with the spiral they used for ours). It looks like the Betty Crocker kids book might not have enough good paper left for that.

I have some larger cookbooks including Joy of Cooking where the binding is going. I think they are too large for spiral binding to work and I haven't figured out how to fix those.

https://feltmagnet.com/crafts/book-repair-glue

I used the Elmer's craft glue. You can get it almost anywhere.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00178QQXY/?tag=hubacct4282-20

I probably have over a hundred (collected over the course of 20-25 years). Funny thing is that I own cookbooks but rarely use them. These days, I either go online to find new recipes or use the ones that I've handwritten on scraps of paper and have stuffed into a recipe box. One author I collected was Maida Heatter; there wasn't one recipe I tried that wasn't great.

I have several "Cook's Illustrated" cookbooks and a couple years worth of the magazines. I do like and use several of their recipes. If it is something I am not familiar with at all, I do appreciate all the step-by-step and comments.

However, after I have learned how to do it, or if it is a cuisine I know, I rewrite the recipe steps to be much easier and significantly fewer pans.

It is not confined to them, a lot of recipes seem overly complicated to me. However, if you have not cooked anything like that before, it does help.

I just counted mine and was pleased to find it's only about 48. Plus a box somewhere, with maybe ten more. Many years of Gourmets have been cut down to two magazine files. And there's a large file carrier of loose printed recipes and a couple of ring binders. And two boxes of index cards.

Many of my cookbooks have only one or two recipes that I make. Sensibly I should just cut them out or copy them, because I could really use the space, but somehow I just want to keep on making the three recipes from Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook. Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes 1 and 2, I would never part with. I think those three books are the first ones I bought when I was learning to cook.

Annie, Meta Given 's two-volume encyclopedia of cooking is on my shelf too. My mother-in-law passed hers on to me when I was first married. It has the best pumpkin pie in the world, really the only one I like. Also recipes for squirrel and muskrat.

CC, even Meta Given cannot make muskrat taste good, LOL. As for the squirrel, even the Ball Blue Book still has instructions for canning it, something that did surprise me somewhat.

I can sit with that book and read Grandma's notes and just smile, it makes me happy.

Annie

I got rid of all of my cookbooks except for two sentimental favorites. I left home with hardly any culinary skills. When I married I bought these two books,

Joy of cooking from 1967

Joy of cooking taught me the basics. It was my go-to for absolutely every cooking related answer just the same as Readers Digest Garden book was for plants and gardening.

Laurel's kitchen 1976

Laurel's kitchen helped me maintain my vegetarian diet while cooking everyone else are meat.

I would try to make something close to what everyone else was eating but vegetarian. I decided to go back to eating meat after 5 years but I've maintained my appreciation for Laurel's kitchen.