Cookbooks with Exceptional Pictures

Carefully crafted imagery has long adorned the inner pages of cookbooks. In 1570, for example, Bartolomeo Scappi published Opera, a cookery book that included 28 engraved plates depicting cooking tools and scenes of kitchen happenings.

Today, cookbooks hold space for both artful and practical representations of recipes. From hand-drawn pictures of seasonal vegetables to photographed multi-course meals printed on glossy pages, cookbook imagery can inspire readers to be more adventurous, creative and confident in the kitchen.

What kinds of cookbook imagery resonate most with you? Below are some cookbooks that use images to the fullest.

A Good Bake balances dramatic, artful food photography with instructional photos that clearly depict each written recipe step. These photos make complex baked goods like croissants and Salted Caramel Sticky Buns more approachable to create.

My Everyday Lagos Kitchen contains vibrant photographs of the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria, the region upon which the cookbook is based. As readers are transported to Lagos’ thriving marketplaces, Komolafe invites readers to learn about local cuisine through photographs of labeled ingredients. These are supplemented by colorful images of Komolafe’s own Nigerian recipes.

America's Test Kitchen is focused on practically demonstrating basic cooking skills and recipes to readers, through both detailed written explanations and instructional photographs. Learn the functional differences between various knife shapes, the best way to butcher and pound chicken and how to handle pie crust through this book’s photos.

Let's Make Ramen! is a colorful cookbook that teaches readers how to make various types of ramen. All of Let’s Make Ramen’s recipes and imagery follow a comic-book layout and cartoonish art style.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat serves a different purpose than traditional cookbooks. It’s a reference text designed to highlight the core elements and techniques of flavorful cooking. Both scientific and colloquial in its approach to teaching, this book features handwritten notes and vibrant, hand-drawn ingredients amid traditional printed text. Its visual influence on readers extends beyond print material, for it also served as the inspiration behind the Netflix original docuseries of the same name.

Did any of these cookbooks speak to you? Let us know your favorite recipes in the comments below!