IACP announces cookbook award winners

March 16, 2014·Darcie

IACP winners

The IACP, at its annual conference held this year in Chicago, announced the winners of its 2014 cookbook awards. Stone Edge Farm Cookbook, a self-published cookbook from the vineyard/farm of the same name, took top honors as Book of the Year and also won the Julia Child Award for first cookbook. While The A.O.C. Cookbook may have been defeated in The Piglet (the final round in that competition pits The New Persian Kitchen against Roberta's Cookbook), it managed to snag the IACP Restaurant Cookbook title.

In addition to this year's winning cookbooks, the IACP presented a Lifetime Achievement award to food scientist and author Shirley Corriher. The following five books garnered Culinary Classics Awards, essentially entering the "Cookbook Hall of Fame." These venerable tomes inspired countless cooks and grace thousands of EYB members' bookshelves:

The Art of Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy (Clarkson Potter, 1989)
Invitation to Indian Cookery Madhur Jaffrey (Knopf, 1973)
Betty Crocker's Cookbook (Originally Betty Crocker's Picture Book) by Betty Crocker (1950)
The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen (Ten Speed, 1977)
The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Shelia Lukins (Workman, 1982)

If you want to "test drive" this year's winning books, EYB has indexed online recipes for several of the winners, including the The A.O.C. Cookbook, Single Ingredient winner Mast Brothers Chocolate, American cookbook winner The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, General cookbook winner Keepers and Health and Special Diet winner Vegetable Literacy. In addition, the E-Cookbook winner, The Journey has links to all 40 recipes online (if you are a subscriber), and for this week has opened the recipes to be viewed by everyone, subscriber or not.

To view all of the nominees and winners, visit the EYB IACP Awards page.

9 comments

ellabeeMarch 18, 2014

@Darcie: Unless you know someone who's bought a copy or can attend a book promo event, there's no way to buy except sight unseen; it's only available from the (self)publisher. I'm sure it's physically beautiful. I'm a lot less sure that it's anything new or remarkable in the way of food writing or recipes.

ellabeeMarch 16, 2014

Not remotely questioning Stone Edge Farm's decision to self-publish the book. Seriously questioning a vanity effort, however beautifully executed, being awarded the top of all cookbooks published this year.

ellabeeMarch 16, 2014

Thanks, Darcie, for the link to the feature on John McReynolds.

ellabeeMarch 16, 2014

Eyebrows raised. Would be interested to know who had ever heard of John McReynolds or Stone Edge Farm before the nominations and awards, and why, if it's all that, no publisher was interested in the book. Maybe pay to play has always been a part of the IACP awards, but this puts bells on it...

JaneMarch 16, 2014

csmcbride - thanks for that info. I have added it to the post. Many congratulations on this year's win - following on from last year's IACP Award for My Provence by Laurent Gras (also indexed on EYB).

darcie_bMarch 18, 2014

@ellabee: my curiosity got the better of me, so I ordered the book. We'll see if it lives up to the hype. And if not, I'll have something pretty to display on my coffee table.

darcie_bMarch 16, 2014

Sometimes author choose to self-publish for complete editorial control and/or to be able to get all profits from the book.

It sounds like this book contains essays written by various vineyard employees, in addition to the recipes. That may have been a hard sell to a standard publishing house (although 10 Speed Press comes to mind as one publisher that might have taken on this type of project). You can read what the author John McReynolds has to say about the cookbook here: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20140211/lifestyle/140219947

I'd like to thumb through the book before committing to the $60 price tag.

csmcbrideMarch 17, 2014

@Jane - Thank you for your kind words and for updating the post to include The Journey!

csmcbrideMarch 16, 2014

You can also test drive The Journey, this year's E-Cookook category winner in full online. We've opened it up (full access normally requires a subscription to the Alta Editions Cooking Series) for anyone to come in and view the entire book from now until next weekend. All of the recipes are linked from The Journey page on EYB: http://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/132957/the-journey-alta-editions-parts