Write a Cookbook or Memoir with Recipes? Here's How to Pick the Right One

Photo by @beccatapert

“This isn’t the book I wanted to write.”

I stayed silent on the call as my client laid out the book she imagined in her head against the one showing up on the page. For six months, we’d been working towards a memoir with recipes, but she wanted a drool-worthy cookbook people would use as an art piece in their home. 

This was the first time I heard about this, even after marketing exercises working through where the book would be next to competitors. After all of our work, I wasn’t convinced it was the best medium for the story she was telling.

Don’t assume because you’re talking about a story with recipes that the genre doesn’t matter. A cookbook with essays is wildly different from a memoir with recipes and choosing the wrong one could be the difference maker in selling your book. 

Here’s how to choose the right one for your project.

Choosing Between Recipe Driven Stories and Story Driven Recipes

Recipe Driven Stories

Crack open Roy Choi’s L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food or Alvin Cailan’s Amboy: Recipes from the Filipino-American Dream, and you could think either would also be good memoirs. 

Choi’s stunning essays, no doubt shaped by co-authors Tien Nguyen and Natasha Phan, could easily be a memoir. But what would become of those 85+ recipes? They’re too dope to be chilling just in black and white. You need to see their wild creativity with a typography that feels like you’re on the sidewalks of L.A.

Same thing for Cailan. Just read the introductions by him and co-author Alexandra Cuerdo, and you’re hooked by their distinct point of view and story craft. Reading 300 pages of them just talking would be easy. But with interviews and stories woven into the recipes, this was always meant to be a cookbook. 

These are recipe driven stories. Even though a cookbook still needs a compelling story, the genre is flexible with how it’s presented to readers. 

Are folks flipping through or splaying out on the granite slabs in their kitchens? 

Will readers be able to still get a sense of what your book is about if they don’t start at the beginning? 

Are your stories best told through strong photography, graphics and recipes?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re writing a cookbook.

Story Driven Recipes

Grab Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums, Molly Wizenburg’s Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage, or David Lebovitz’s The Sweet Life in Paris, and you’ll be flipping pages quickly and making sure you didn’t skip anything. 

There’s no need for pictures (even though some pop up from time to time) because the storytelling is so vivid you forget you’re reading someone’s real life. The recipes are a thread bringing it all together, but they’re the salted caramel drizzle on a satiny cup of hot chocolate. You didn’t need it to love it, but you couldn’t imagine the experience without it out now. 

Story driven recipes are sneaky because you’re being set up from the beginning. Authors write each chapter with the end in mind, and the work is less about the recipe and more about the internal change taking place through the exploration of food.

If you find recipes aren’t the driving force behind your story and you have more stories than recipes, a memoir with recipes is screaming your name.

Choosing your genre and sticking with it will speed up your book writing process. There won’t be anymore back and forth about what you could or could not write. Restrictions breed more creativity. 

And if you need help to sort through what would be the best for you and your story, grab a spot on my coaching waitlist. It’s time to pick your “cooking” method and stick with it.