Aside from children’s books, cookbooks seem to offer some of the greatest opportunities for books-to-apps. The most popular cookbook-related apps are, unsurprisingly, tied to big-name authors such as Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Martha Stewart. But later this year and in 2012, developers are planning to unveil a slew of new cookbook apps from a range of authors big and small. We’ve already reported on David Chang’s forthcoming journal from McSweeney’s, which will have a companion app, as well as apps from Chronicle Books. Also coming up are apps from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s bestselling cupcake books, Hello, Cupcake and What’s New, Cupcake?, developed by Culinate; as well as apps from Dave Joachim, Dorie Greenspan, and Eric Ripert from CulinApp, a new company focused solely on culinary apps. Here are some of this spring’s new apps and newly updated apps based on cookbooks.
Title: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
Publisher/Developer: Culinate
Available: Mid-April
Price: $4.99, with a probable short-term discount at release
Background: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman came out from Wiley in 2007, a vegetarian spin-off of the bestselling How to Cook Everything. HTCE’s app, which was updated in February, has consistently ranked among the top apps in the iTunes app store.
Interactive features: The app will have 2,000 vegetarian and vegan recipes, all searchable.
Title: iCookbook
Publisher/Developer: Publications International
Available: March 16
Price: $4.99
Background: The app comes with more than 2,000 recipes, many from brand names such as Campbell's, Crock-Pot slow cooker, and Hershey's. Each month, users can download more free recipes.
Interactive features: A feature called Voice Command lets users speak simple instructions, which allows for hands-free use of the iPad while cooking.
Title: Vegan with a Vengeance
Publisher/Developer: MobiFusion
Available: Updated February 9
Price: $9.99
Background: Da Capo published Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock by Isa Chandra Moskowitz in 2005, and Moskowitz has gone on to write many more vegan cookbooks.
Interactive features: Users can scroll through recipes individually, or search recipes by keywords and mealtime themes.
Title: Recipes from Harvest to Heat
Publisher/Developer: Taunton Interactive
Available: Updated December 20, 2010
Price: Free
Background: Taunton released Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America's Best Chefs, Farmers, and Artisans by Darryl Estrine and Kelly Kochendorfer, with a foreword by Alice Waters, last fall.
Interactive features: The app is a useful promo for the book; it features 12 recipes for starters, soups, main dishes, sides, and desserts from chefs including Daniel Boulud, Johnny Iuzzini, Thomas Keller, and Nancy Silverton. It also has an interactive map to restaurants, farmers, and food artisans across the country.
Title: The Seriously Good Gluten Free Living App
Publisher/Developer: MS Internet Limited/Spots Consulting Limited
Available: November 2010
Price: $6.99
Background: The app is based on Phil Vickery’s Seriously Good! Gluten-Free Cooking, which Kyle Cathie published in the U.K. (the book has not been published by an American house, although Firefly Books released Vickery’s Gluten-Free Baking here in February).
Interactive features: Recipes for meat, fish, vegetarian dishes, baked goods, snacks, desserts, kid-friendly food, plus a section on “basics,” such as gluten-free flour mixes, shortbread. Tapping on certain paragraphs within a recipe turns them bold, making them easier to read. Videos offer instructions on making fruity sherbet slush, almond and blackberry feather cakes, and more.
