How to Write a Cookbook Table of Contents
It may sound ho-hum or something more important in a grade-school book report, but a cookbook’s table of contents (often shortened to “contents”) matters. Figuring out how you’re going to organize a cookbook is one of the first steps of writing one. It means you know where you’re headed. When you develope recipes, they’ll have some place to go. You’ll know where key essays or photo spreads might fit. Starting a project with a good working table of contents in place makes the whole cookbook process much, much tidier.
In this post, we’ll go over common ways to organize cookbooks
If you took the analogy of building a house and applied it to writing a cookbook, the foundation is the spark, the idea that got you excited for writing the book in the first place. That’s the “I NEED to write about THIS” part of the cookbook project. The idea will be the theme that ties everything together.
After the foundation, you need walls, the plywood and whatever else it takes to build up from the foundation to give a house bones (My brother-in-law, a contractor, would likely take issue with my oversimplification of all this, but stick with me for the exercise). This is the practical stuff, the outline of the various rooms you need, the space for doors and windows, etc. In a cookbook, this is the contents page, and it’s only from there that a book starts to take on its shape. Once you’ve hammered out the contents, you can then paint and furnish your bare-bones rooms with recipes and wire it with stories to make it come to life. (Whew. Analogy complete.)
Figuring out how to organize your recipes when you’re only getting started might sound daunting. What if you put the walls in the wrong place? What if some rooms are too big? What if you don’t have any idea where to start? What if you got confused when I started talking about rooms and walls? (Apologies.)
Less daunting: You have options!
It’s okay to try out several structures until landing on the one that works. When my co-authors John Lee and Ara Zada and I started writing Lavash, we had a big idea for the book: celebrating the food from Armenia. We had a list of recipes in mind, most of them not developed yet, and had to sort out how they all might fit together. We had several false starts. One early idea was to have a chapter on bread, a chapter on soups/broths/stews, and a chapter on barbecue. We’d call the book “Bread, Bones, and Barbecue: Recipes and Stories from Armenia.” Our agent’s response: Try adding more focus. We then realized that the most essential part of our book was bread, especially lavash, and so we structured everything around a bread chapter.
We knew early on that the book would stretch beyond bread, and we had to figure out how to fit in the other recipes. While in Armenia on an early research trip, we met Halle Butvin, the director of special projects at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She happened to be in the process of organizing an entire festival centered around the folklife and food of Armenia, and had come up with an organization for the festival focused on the importance of the tonir (the traditional oven of Armenia), of feasting, of preserving, and of creating abundance out of humble ingredients. We borrowed from Halle’s structure (with her blessing), and created chapters based around breads, simple meals of soups and salads (creating abundance), feasting (barbecue and heartier meals), and sweets (fruit preserves, an amazing baklava recipe, and so on). It was a bit more of a whimsical structure than some of my other books, but it worked.
Once we figured it out, our lives became way easier. As the lead writer, I knew what kind of chapter introductions I needed to draft and could work out what kind of information we’d need to provide in introductions (such as a description about the country of Armenia and how the food there differs from the food of the Armenian diaspora). We also realized what recipes we needed to track down in Armenia and the recipes we could scratch from our early recipe list. We could better conceptualize our shot list for photography so that one chapter didn’t have all images of scenery because we hadn’t taken enough images of food.
Could we have added an additional chapter later in the game if we wanted to? Yes, though it would truly have to feel like we had enough to say about the subject to feel as complete as the other chapters. In other words, you can add or lose chapters later in the game, but it can often require more rewriting or reorganizing.
Let’s take a closer look at options for organizing a cookbook. Some of the books I’ve listed as examples span a couple of different categories, so it’s not an all-or-nothing kind of game. For example, you can have a book organized by ingredient that is also organized seasonally (like Sweeter off the Vine, by Yossy Arefi). (For this post, I’m skipping delving into single-subject cookbooks specifically, though many of them have a format that followed one of these categories.)
By Course or Recipe Type (pantry, salads, pasta & grains, poultry & meat, soups, breads, cakes, pies, cookies)
Why it works: It’s the ultimate user-friendly format for cookbook readers. It’s also by far the most common and is often the best solution for a cookbook that aims to be cooked from often. It works for savory foods, general cookbooks, entertaining books, baking books that cover multiple types of baked goods—you name it.
Challenges: Making it exciting. Instead of “main courses,” writers may say “from the grill,” “weeknight noodles,” or “one-skillet suppers.”
Examples: Super Natural Simple, All About Dinner, Vietnamese Food Any Day, Modern Potluck, Duck Soup (pictured above), Falastin, Genius Desserts, and on and on and on.
By Season (recipes organized by spring, summer, fall, winter+)
Why it works: If the book is geared specifically toward taking deep dives into produce or the time of year has a profound impact on the theme of the book, this might be the best way to organize it. For example, the book Six Seasons makes a point about seasons in the title and consequently organizes the book to support its theme.
Challenges: If a reader wants a salad recipe, they may have to flip through to multiple chapters to see all of the types of salads they have to choose from. Also, what’s in season in one area may not be in another. In California, local strawberries arrive in spring. In Illinois, the local crop typically emerges in summer. You have to be careful how dogmatic you get about seasonality if you want broad appeal.
Examples: Sunday Suppers at Lucques, Six Seasons, The Preservation Kitchen, Sweeter off the Vine
By Menu (entertaining, theme menus and meals)
Why it works: If someone is planning a party, getting ideas for cooking for a crowd, or is simply trying to make weekend dinners more special, these cookbooks can be go-to resources for years.
Challenges: Avoiding making the book feel too “special occasion-y” so people only use it out when they want to be fancy.
Sunday Suppers at Lucques, How to Eat a Peach, Cooking for Good Times, Wine Food
By Ingredient (chapters based around a grain, a vegetable, or a fruit)
Why it works: This structure makes it easy for the author to do a deep dive into explaining how to use an ingredient and what makes the ingredient special. Books organized this way can become great reference books.
Challenges: Creating recipes that truly highlight that ingredient without a lot of distractions. In other words, if the feature ingredient is eggplant, it’s maybe not the best idea to have a curry recipe that uses eggplant with 20 other ingredients unless you can make a clear case why eggplant is so crucial to make the dish come together.
Examples: Mother Grains, Ruffage, Good to the Grain, The Noma Guide to Fermentation
By Location (chapters based on specific cities, neighborhoods, countries, restaurants, or regions)
Why it works: The structure allows for a lot of storytelling and scene-setting. These are the kinds of books that read “armchair traveler.” For these books, it helps to pick places that people really, really want to visit—or, at least, travel vicariously through the recipes/photos.
Challenges: Making the book cohesive and practical to use in a kitchen, avoiding overwrought descriptions, and keeping ingredient lists sensible so people don’t have to buy new pantry staples for each region or recipe.
Examples: Getaway, Istanbul & Beyond, Black Sea, Alpine Cooking
By Technique (grilling, steaming, frying, pickling, etc.)
Why it works: It is a great format for teaching technique, which can be tricky in cookbooks organized in other ways. It’s also a good way to introduce a new audience to traditional cooking methods that are less known outside of their country/region of origin.
Challenges: Making the book useable. Can you get readers to get through the technique explanations so they feel confident in using the recipes in the book?
Examples: Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees, Preserving Italy
And it case you’ve missed them, see my most popular posts of the month:
How to Write a Cookbook Proposal