Old fashioned cookbooks vs online versions?

[RomanAnthonysMama]

Do you prefer to use old fashioned physical cookbooks, or online cookbooks when trying to find new recipes? I usually use the internet since it's so much more convenient, but to be honest, I do miss old cookbooks sometimes! I still have them, but they're all dusty from never using them anymore. It's just so much easier to hop online and get an old recipe. I only really resort to the old cookbooks if I know there's some notes I jotted down in there somewhere.

Which do you prefer? The old fashioned cookbooks or online/tablet versions?

 

[RomanAnthonysMama]

I remember growing up, my mother always had a little tin box with Charlie Brown on it, and she had tons of index cards in it with recipes, notes about recipes, cooking tips, etc. It brings back tons of memories just thinking about it! Do you still use recipe cards, or does someone in your family still use them? Those may actually even be more convenient than the internet since they're so readily available. Do you copy recipes onto your index cards from the net?

 

[Arch]

We were only looking at my Mum's recipe system at the weekend. Recipes cut from magazines, and hand written recipes and so on, all in a photo album, the sort with slightly tacky pages with a clear film over the top. She can pull out the one she needs to keep beside her when cooking, and store them all in one volume.

 

[Alex H]

I scan stuff I like to keep and put it on my laptop in a mini website - I did it this way when using this house primarily as a holiday home, as it was easier than humping books over.

 

[Night Train]

I use cookbooks, cards, and leaflets, and will write down recipes and cooking instructions to use. It saves taking the laptop to the cook area and getting even more food on the keyboard!

I am a book lover and still refuse to get a Kindle. I even print out PDF books and operating manuals to read and keep on the book shelves for future reference.

 

[zestery]

Mainly internet, but that's partly because the cookbooks I do have are just okay. I need to did out the ones in storage, but my kitchen is a bit small and counter space is at a premium.

 

[crimsonghost747]

Definitely online. It's quicker and easier and the thing I really like is that you can find so many different recipes for the same dish. If it's a new dish I'm making I usually read at least 5 different ones and then either choose the best one of take a little bit of inspiration from different ones. Also most websites offer a comments section where people write what they thought of it, including ingredients which they add themselves.

 

[The Aspertarian]

I love a cookbook I can hold in my hand. When I wrote my cookbook, I did it in print FIRST - although I did also do it in Kindle and all the other electronic formats.
I admit, I was not thinking of my readers, I was thinking of what I like.
It has been fun, though, because I get to sign them. You can't sign an ebook!
What I like, though, is the much loved cookbook with the battered cover, turned, stained pages (especially for the favorite recipes). I keep all of the recipes I create on my computer, but I keep a printed copy as well because when I cook that is what I prefer to use.

 

[Arch]

What I like, though, is the much loved cookbook with the battered cover, turned, stained pages (especially for the favorite recipes).

When I was growing up, my Mum had two main cookbooks. and a lot of recipes clipped from magazines, or hand written, stuck into scrapbooks.

One printed book she had was a paperback 1960's edition of Mrs Beeton - just the recipes, not the whole Household Management stuff about how to employ a footman and so on. Some of the recipes had been updated a bit I think. Anyway, that book was in pieces. Literally, almost as many pieces as it had pages! It was THE book you went to for cake, or pastry recipes, and many main dishes.

Eventually, in the 2000's, I found a copy in better condition in a second hand book shop, and sent it to her, and she was able to ditch the original, and cook without causing a shower of pages every time!

The other main cook was called "First Slice your Cookbook" and it was (is, in fact, she still has it), quite ingenious. It was spiral bound, and each page was cut into in three separate sections - starter at the top, main in the middle, dessert at the bottom. The idea was you could plan a three course meal, with any combination from the book, and have it open at all three at once, because they were all separate. We never had three course meals though! I've never seen another like it!

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

printed copies of everything. though I often cut recipes out and stick them into my own recipes book (or scan them and print them if they are in a recipe book which I don't own). I might be an IT Engineer, but I don't like having laptops etc in the kitchen. I use paper all the time for cooking... perhaps that needs rephrasing

 

[MyDigitalpoint]

When I need a recipe on the rush, I try to find it online first, but I have to read it and compare it with another 2 or 3 to make sure this is what I need.

However when I have the time to plan a dish, dessert or cake ahead on time, I may go back to my printed cookbooks and lose recipes and newspapers clips that I have still somewhere in the house.

Problem with the Internet is that is growing at a fast pace, what means that everyday come online more and more people that may publish a recipe that is a distortion of the original. But this is not all! Someone else may see the recipe and repost it elsewhere, but changing again some of the ingredients, the amount, preparation or cooking time.

At the very end, it's hard to find recipes that are accurate or transcription of the original in physical cookbooks or oral tradition.

Even though this is happening with all the information that is generated day after day on the web.

 

[mama2012]

I don't use the recipe cards, but I have a cook book that I have had since I was a little girl. It has a recipe for a homemade chocolate cake that is to die for. The pages are yellow and torn because it belonged to my grandmother. So, not only do I have a great cookbook, I have something to remind me of my grandmother every time I use it.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I still have a recipe book that I stick recipes into as and when I see something I like. I also write the name of the recipe in the back of the book and a page number (written on each page by hand). the book is simply a hard backed lined book, nothing special. I do also nowadays (for the last 2-3 years) have a scanned copy of the recipes I use the most often so they were available to me when we went off on a 12 month cycle tour (was meant to have been longer).

The rule I have nowadays is that the recipe has to have been 'created' or 'made' and liked for it to get into the recipe book because prior to our tour, I had 4 of these books on the go, all full and many many more magazines and the likes which had potential recipes in, so the laptop acts as a holding area and if the recipe is used, it gets printed and if it is liked and going to get repeated will get put into the book.

I also have all of my late Grannie's old recipes in several books and large envelopes which I have scanned in for family to have copies of.

 

[chocomore]

Even though we have the internet I still love using cook books, I love having my book on the table open while l'm back and forth with ingredients. I do get recipes from online but l'm old fashioned and I still need my books.

 

[Annetteb]

I have recipe books,cards, and magazines. I like to go online looking for new recipes and I like to copy them down. I am always on the lookout for something new to cook. I love experimenting with new recipes.