"food stylist" news and stories

If there is one thing that will sell a cookbook it is high quality, full-color photographs of the food. Good cookbooks will sell regardless, especially as word of mouth spreads, but if you flip open a brand new cookbook in the bookstore and your mouth begins to water, chances are excellent that you will be walking out with that book in hand. Unfortunately, while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it doesn’t necessarily indicate a good recipe. Some dishes will photograph well, but are lacking the flavor to make them great. This is a disappointing thing to discover about a new cookbook or recipe, but it will happen, even in great cookbooks. The more perplexing problem is when the photo of the food is unappetizing. The dish may taste fantastic, but the very sight of the finished dish is unappetizing. Creamed chipped beef and chilis are good examples of things that don’t photograph particularly well. The best way for a publisher or a cookbook author to avoid this sort of negative attention is to leave out the photo. A few choice words about how wonderful the recipe is will sell it – even without an illustration.

The photo shown here is of a recipe for S’mores Ice Cream on Cooking.com. While the dessert is simple and probably tastes good, this is a bad photo. Though I believe it is actually the large storage bowl for the ice cream, it resembles a bowl of chunky-looking chocolate soup and it is unappetizing. Scoop some out, put it in a cone – people, including myself, will be far more likely to make it.