Tim with his copy of Katharine Whitehorn's Kitchen in the Corner. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
Like many lovers of food and words I'm left rather high and dry by the supposed bounty in bookshops today. Sure there are plenty of cookbooks on the bestsellers list but they all seem to come with a glittery-toothed sleb on the front cover and bear more resemblance to a 60,000 word, lavishly illustrated press release than anything I'd want to curl up in an armchair with. Fortunately, when almost everything in the bookshop looks like some sort of tie-in, exploitation or spin-off, reprints of older works stand out like beacons in the darkness.
I've always had a bit of a thing for old cookbooks so when G2 asked me to do a piece on reprinted cookery titles I was in my element. Katharine Whitehorn's 'Cooking in a Bedsitter' (WoM passim) got a big mention in the story as did the many titles rediscovered by both Grub Street Publishing and Persephone Books - imprints with a special interest in old cookbooks - but we particularly wanted to sniff out some titles that might be relevant today but are currently out of print.
In cases like this Satan's Interweb really comes into its own. It's at its best when connecting widely distributed individuals with a shared special interest. There's an ever growing constituency of food bloggers and dozens of food boards, public and private, so it was the work of a moment to hook up a small group of like-minded bookies to scour their shelves. Previous generations might have been restricted to what they had room for in their bookcases but the web and more particularly sites like librarything enable bibliophiles to virtually bolt their shelves together into one giant library.
After a bit of ferreting we suggested some neglected titles ripe for relaunch but in doing so we realised that there were probably a lot more out there.
So what did you think of our choices and do you have a favourite cookbook that you'd like to see back in print?
· In Observer Food Monthly this Sunday Katharine Whitehorn talks to Rachel Cooke about gas rings, women's rights, and how to bake a kipper in a jug
