Changes for The Piglet cookbook competition

January 29, 2020·Darcie

After ten years of running The Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks, Food52's sometimes controversial cookbook competition, the site announced yesterday that they were making changes to the contest's format. In past years, the contest has pitted cookbooks head-to-head in a bracket style competition (think of college basketball's NCAA Sweet Sixteen competition). The photo below represents half of the competitors of last year's field. Judges for each pairing were luminaries in the food business, writers, or celebrities who had a penchant for cooking.

These idiosyncracies sometimes ended in controversy as a result of mismatches in pairings (for example a baking book being judged alongside a meat-centric cookbook), the perceived cooking competency of the judges, and other clashes. After a few years of waning interest in The Piglet, Food52 has announced some major changes. They have taken to heart the comments of their readers, keeping the parts of the contest that seemed to resonate the most, such as the deep-dives into cookbooks and The Piglet Community Picks.

With these changes in mind, do you think you'll be tuning in to the "new and improved" Piglet? Or do you feel the same kinds of problems will emerge even with a new format?

10 comments

averythingcooksJanuary 30, 2020

I just read the original Food52 article and I have to say that I agree with many of the comments from readers. I also look forward to the traditional Piglet each year. I agree with some outcomes & not others, love some reviews & not others and have made some good book buying decisions (& some regrettable ones) based on reviews - and all of that is okay. Kristen etc have responded in places to address specific comments and explain the rationale for the changes but still.....I'm disappointed. Maybe once they get the new format up and running I will be pleasantly surprised. I will say that I am sometimes surprised by the tone of the some of the comments on Food52 - ie the suggestion that the new idea "must have come from some unpaid intern" (or something pretty close to that) seems offside to me.

vicksterJanuary 30, 2020

I will tune in, but the new format is diappointing to me. I prefer a selection of the year's notable cookbooks.

FJTJanuary 30, 2020

I will miss the Piglet, but I'm not surprised that Food52 is doing this. I've had to search for the competition in recent years and very much got the feeling that they were burying it somewhere so that it would die a natural death. Their website has changed a lot over the last 2 years too and is now not something I look at often and, when I do, it's not somewhere I linger.

fabulousmsmoxieJanuary 30, 2020

I hope the EYB team grabs this chance to be the new home of a yearly bracket for the best books. I think the spirit of friendly competition for books published each year is so important, and is one of the things I've loved most about both the EYB community and about The Piglet in years past.

MarciKJanuary 30, 2020

I've never heard of this competition as I'm fairly new to (intentionally) collecting cookbooks. How do I "tune in" to this competition and when?

JennyJanuary 30, 2020

MarciK - they are now doing away with the format for the Piglet - here is a link to last year's tournament.

Fabulous - I've wanted to do something like this for years - we will see!

lkgroverJanuary 30, 2020

I will also miss the Piglet competition. The Piglet reviews (when done well) went in-depth into the cookbooks, and encouraged me to buy several that I had overlooked when they were first published. On the positive side, several of the Food52 comments referred to EYB.

rosajane8January 30, 2020

I will miss the Piglet, too. Inspired by the Piglet, I started a cookbook competition of my own of the 16 best cookbooks I bought in the previous year. This will be year three for my competition. 1st year’s winner was Six Seasons and last years was Chai, Chaat and Chutney ?❤️

jackiecatJanuary 30, 2020

I'm not interested in the new Piglet format. And frankly I'm not a fan of the direction that Food52 has taken in the last few years. Too bad, because I used to love it.

GeggersJanuary 31, 2020

The old format was ridiculous and next to useless. Non-cooks and celebrities testing recipes when they often admitted they didn’t cook. Cookbooks are mostly for home cooks. So home cooks should test them. The new format may be a little better, but I’ve lost faith in Food52 in general. It’s become a shopping site with constant marketing emails that I finally unsubscribed from.