A few weeks ago, the staff at Food and Wine published a ranking of the 35 best cookbooks of all time. Such a list is bound to be divisive, because great cookbooks convey the personality of the author as much as they contain solid recipes that stand the test of time, and there is no way that everyone will love the voice of any particular author. That caveat aside, I was still surprised at how few of the choices I either had on my bookshelf or found compelling.

Before I dive into the merits (or lack thereof) of the books on the list, I wanted to make an observation. First, the article says it was "updated" on May 12, 2025, but it was originally written by a different author (Regan Stephens) at some unknown date in the past. So from the get-go, we can see that the list is not fixed in stone but varies depending on who is making the list and, judging by the descriptions, the current zeitgeist. If I had time to kill, I would hop on the Wayback Machine to locate the original post and see what changes had been made.

Now on to the criticism, for which I offer - nothing. For these writers, at this point in time, these are the best 35 cookbooks that exist. (I am dismissing the notion that entries on this list are there because a publisher paid Food & Wine for the privilege.) This is not to say that I agree with the choices. In fact, I would only include about a third of this list in my own rankings of best cookbooks, which would be biased toward the baking genre.

Despite disagreeing with some choices made in curating this list, I still enjoyed reading the article. There are a handful of books that I will consider buying after reading the reasoning behind the book's inclusion. Also, it serves as a reminder to revisit the books that I would add to my own best cookbooks ranking. Lastly, it makes me think critically about my own collection, and how difficult it would be to rank the 400-odd volumes on my bookshelves. I am certain that even my own list would change from month to month and assuredly from year to year. Each is the best cookbook at some point in time, or it wouldn't remain on the shelf.