Food and Things

By Laura B. Weiss

You’re trying to find a gift for a food-obsessed friend. Or you’re an experienced baker and you’d like to know which cookbook will take you to the next level.

T. Susan Chang, a regular cookbook reviewer for NPR.org and The Boston Globe, has come out with a cookbook ratings app, dubbed Cookshelf.

The app is easy to use and sorts cookbooks (on a scale of 1-5) by skill level, by the level of recipe innovation, by its gift-giving potential, and by whether it’s a “keeper,” with recipes that you’ll return to as favorites again and again.

For example, Chang gives All About Braising by Molly Stevens a 5 in the “keeper’ category, calling it a “forever” cookbook. Meanwhile, The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook—you can try your hand at Lady Mary’s Crab Canapés—rates only a 1. “Here and gone (trendy and ephemeral”), sniffs Chang.

You can use CookShelf to sort cookbooks numerous ways, from Mother’s Day to Gluten-free. Each entry contains sample recipes, a note on how long the recipe will take, and a description of how readily ingredients can be located at your local supermarket.

Each cookbook rating is preceded by a summary of it’s pros and cons. Chang is a lively and knowledgeable writer and her intros are informative and engaging. If you want more, you can click on Chang’s full reviews in The Boston Globe.

A couple of quibbles with this otherwise outstanding app for both casual cooks and collectors. The design is a bit clunky and it would be useful when you sort through a category to have both the name of author as well as the title listed.