IACP Adds Three New Categories To Cookbook Awards
The call for entries is underway for the 2010 IACP cookbook awards (omfg have you submitted yet?), and the field has changed just a little with the addition of three new categories. Recognizing the expanding market for kiddie-chefs and family dinner compilations, they've added a Children, Youth, and Family category; Culinary History opens the doors to more academic options as well as the exploding single-subject nonfiction genre (Mark Kurlansky, are you paying attention?); and Professional Kitchens separates books written for professional chefs from the chaff of home-kitchen cookery.
We can't help but wonder whether someone at the IACP was paying attention when we took them to task for overlooking some game-changing cookbooks at the 2009 awards — these categories strike us as no-brainers for inclusion, particularly Culinary History and Professional Kitchens. Those two help reposition the IACP — seen by many in the culinary industry as, let us say, a small-potatoes dinosaur — as an institution for serious chefs and serious culinarians. For that matter, had the Professional Kitchens category existed last year, we're sure Thomas Keller's criminally overlooked Under Pressure would have been a lock.
–Helen Rosner
