What do you like best in a cookbook?

[RandyWayne]

Originally Posted by commonsense

I own several church cookbooks and they usually have good selections .

The downside------poor directions; no oven temperature; incomplete list of ingredients---------these are the issues I've seen multiple times.

Have a good proof reader and add some pictures or clever church stories.

So basically your saying they are lacking the "professionalism" that a good editor brings to the table.

Actually I find this is true with most Christian literature, at least many years ago. Barnes&Nobles and Walden books always carried real hard cover book and the Christian bookstore's were all flimsy soft cover ones on far cheaper paper.

[Esther]

Originally Posted by Blubayou

I love church cookbooks, because the recipes usually are easy, practical and have ingredients that are easy to find. A couple of suggestions- index is a must- try an list of contents for each section at the beginning of the section, also try having the recipes in alpha order within the section. Have a variety of recipes- recipes for holidays, recipes for entertaining, recipes for a crowd, quick and easy recipes, recipes that have 5 or fewer ingredients, and basic recipes, crockpot recipes, casserole recipes. When I was a new cook, I needed to know how to make steak and gravy, or how to cook fresh mustard greens. Hope this helps.

These are good suggestions. Unfortunately, we are limited to 7 dividers unless we go custom and then we can have as many as we want I suppose.

The index is always at the end of the book.

[Blubayou]

Something I have enjoyed that some cookbooks include is stories attached to the recipe. Where you got the recipe, a fun story about the recipe, when you usually use this recipe or a family/ church story connected to the recipe or the history of a dish like gumbo.