This book cover released by Phaidon Press shows "The Silver Spoon". (AP Photo/Phaidon Press)
(AP)
What exactly is one person supposed to do with 2,000 Italian recipes? Or 1,400 French dishes?
A new generation of comprehensive (some would say behemoth) cookbooks is cramming thousands of recipes into weighty volumes, some nearly 3 inches thick and weighing more than 4 pounds.
Why the heavyweights? Publishers say it's a matter of survival, crediting the Internet and the tough economy with driving the trend.
"This might be a reaction to the Internet and the encyclopedic selection of recipes that's at your fingertips," says Chris Steighner, senior editor at Rizzoli Publications, publisher of "La Cucina," a 4 1/4-pound, 2,000-recipe ode to regional Italian cooking.
"A lot of it is about quantity now because we're faced with the Internet," he says.
During the past four years, roughly a dozen of these monsters have crashed the landscape of five-ingredient, 30-minute meal books. "The Silver Spoon," for example, the category's 2005 standard-bearer, jams 2,000 Italian recipes into 1,264 pages.
For Francophiles, there is this year's "I Know How to Cook," a translation of a popular French cookbook featuring 1,400 recipes over 975 pages. And last year, the 10th anniversary edition of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" sported 2,000 recipes.
By comparison, the just-released "Gourmet Today" (from the defunct magazine) seems slender with just 1,000 recipes and pages. Most traditionally sized cookbooks clock in closer to 150 recipes.
"People are demanding them," says Emilia Terragni, editorial director at Phaidon Press, publisher of "The Silver Spoon," "I Know How to Cook" and other mega-volumes. "We have over 1,000 or over 2,000 recipes and they're still selling for $45. That's a good price."
Giant cookbooks are nothing new. As far back as 1896, Fannie Farmer offered more than 1,800 recipes for everything from "after-dinner coffee" to capon in aspic. The "Joy of Cooking" has had a kitchen-sink approach since it was first mass published in 1936. And Julia Child's 1961 "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" eventually filled two volumes.
