Cookbook:Introduction

The Cookbook is a Wikibooks subproject, consisting of a collaborative effort to document and teach all aspects of cooking. It includes information on everything from ingredients to equipment and techniques, with a vast collection of recipes through which to apply this knowledge. A wiki is an ideal forum for communicating content such as recipes because it allows users to ask questions as well as to give feedback about recipes they have tried in order to iteratively improve them. As a living work, the Cookbook is also able to document developments in cooking technology as they appear, putting them in context over time and with respect to existing and past methodologies.

Audience

The Cookbook is intended for a wide range of audiences with varying levels of skill in cookery. Novice cooks will find simple recipes, as well as a wealth of information to help them expand their understanding and skill. For more advanced cooks, the detailed information contained here can serve as a reference text, and more advanced recipes exist in our collection for their use.

Organization and navigation

The Cookbook is primarily organized around pages and categories. The main page types in the cookbook are recipes, ingredients, equipment, techniques, and cuisines. Due to the sheer scope of the Cookbook and its status as a living and evolving project, manual updates of various indices are not feasible as they are with other books here. Instead, category pages function as automatically-updated tables of contents; they do not have additional content written about them. When a new page is created, it is added to all applicable categories (e.g. Italian recipes, fruits, etc), which helps maintain the Cookbook's organization over time.

In addition to the category system, navigation is also possible through the primary table of contents, as well as the navigation bar at the top of cookbook pages.