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Free Cooking, Food & Wine Books Online
Introduction
This is a listing of sites that legally offer free Cooking, Food & Wine books , for reading and listening (audio).
All of these sites listed have content that is legal for them to distribute. If you find that any site listed is offering content that can not be legally transferred, please let me know in the comments below.
This list is not comprehensive and if you know of any other sites please post in the comments below or at our forums.
A comprehensive alphabetical listing of free books for reading or listening can be found on these pages:
There will be other books on Cooking, Food & Wine at the sites listed there, but they are not categorized at the sites. There are also links to other genre pages at those sites.
Libraries are also an excellent source for reading and listening materials for children. To find out more information on your local library, the links here may help: Library Information
There are 16 other book pages here at Gizmo's covering other various popular book genres and offering links to free online books listed here: Book Genre Pages
This page's listings can be accessed as follows:
Cooking, Food & Wine
2020k (CFW) Large collection, nicely divided into sub-categories, available for download in a variety of formats.
AssociatedContent has several cookbooks available for download in pdf. Most are short and specific (muffin recipes etc.), but the Chocolate recipe book is over 600 pages and the Blue Ribbon recipes are over 400 pages.
Bartleby has the famous 1918 Fannie Farmer The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book available for online viewing.
BooksShouldBeFree has 7 unique free cookbooks. Although this is an audiobook site, there are links to text copies at gutenberg.
Bored.com (Cooking) has 70 cookbooks available for online viewing. Searchable by title. Some interesting entries.
Bookyards (CFW) 23 interesting cookbooks available in pdf download
ChestofBooks (Cooking) Around 100 books available for online viewing.
Classicly 
has a large collection of classic cookbooks. These are available for download in PDF or KINDLE. Thanks to Tyler G for this suggestion.
CookingWithUs has a large and diverse collection of cookbooks available in PDF (zipped). Also, a few cookbooks available in Kindle.
CreativeHomemaking has a number of free cookbooks available for download in pdf. Some interesting entries here, including "How to Make a Gingerbread House".
DigitalBookIndex links to a large collection of cookbooks and general cooking information. Viewing and download options vary as these are links to various sites.
eBookCellar has nine free cookbooks available for download in PDF (zipped). For some reason, you have to go through a few pages to get to the download, but there is no signup etc.
e-booksdirectory has several interesting free cookbooks available for download in pdf (click on sub-categories on page).
e-cookbooks.net has 14 smaller cookbooks available for free download in pdf.
FeedingAmerica offers an excellent collection of close to 80 cookbooks. These are available for reading online or for download in PDF. Thanks to Susan B for this suggestion.
Freeebooks.info (CFW) 18 books available for download in varying formats
FreeOnlineBookstore has a good number of links to free books their cooking and food category, which is also divided into 4 subcategories. Since most link off site, the options for downloading/viewing vary.
FreeQuickRecipes 3 cookbooks available for download in pdf and a large amount of recipes for online viewing as well as other information on kitchen and diet
GetFreeBooks (Cooking) This has grown to a large and interesting listing of cookbooks and bartending books.
Globusz (cooking) 6 cookbooks available for online viewing or download
GoogleBooks has a large number of free cookbooks under its "Cooking" category available for download in pdf. There are about 400 listings all together under that category and about half are full cookbooks.
Gutenberg (Cookery) Large collection of cookbooks and other informative food books available for download in several formats.
HealthRecipes A good number of cookbooks available for download in pdf. Scroll down the page as there are pay books at the top.
InternetArchive has over 1300 free ebooks under its "Cookery" heading. many are from the 1800s and while age has not much bearing on recipes, the books have an older view on a woman's place.
ManyBooks (Cooking) 145 cookbooks available for download in a variety of formats
MeatBook has an online cookbook image of the Ground Meat Cookbook available for online viewing.
MedievalCookery In addition to offering a selection of medieval recipes, this site has a large listing of links to online medieval cookbooks.
MemoWare (Food and Nutrition) 272 works, including cookbooks and nutritional information available for download in varying formats
Nancy'sKitchen has a nice size collection of small cookbooks available for free download in pdf.
obooko offers 4 free cooking books by self publishing authors for download. Free registration is required.
OpeneBooksLibrary has 10 free cookbooks available. About half are from Gutenberg and have the usual wide variety of viewing and download options. The other half are unique to this site and are available in PDF .
QuickFound has links to many and varied free online cookbooks for viewing and for download in pdf. Definitely worth checking out.
Smashwords has about 25 original cookbooks. These are available for download in a wide variety of formats, including KINDLE, EPUB and PDF among others, as well as for online viewing.
Vitalita The Vitalita Culinary Group is offering two free vegan cookbooks for download in text. A Taste of Vitality and Desserts of Vitality include pictures of the finished dishes.
Witguides (Cooking&Recipes) 32 cookbooks available for download in pdf (zipped)
Cooking, Food & Wine (Audio)
LibriVox has 21 free audio books available for download in MP3 (64kb/128kb) or ogg vorbis. All are human read.
I assumed there would not be many audio books on Cooking as it would be hard to follow audio recipes and I could only find this one site. If you know of others, please post in the comments below.
Recipe Sites
I was not originally going to list recipe sites, but a few visitors listed recipe sites in the comments and I thought I would start this section. Only sites suggested by visitors will be listed here.
AnnaMaria'sOpenKitchen is a site devoted to recipes for Italian cuisine. Also, a nice listing of the best of various Italian food stuffs. Suggested by Richey.
AsiaSociety has a good size collection of Asian recipes as well as information on Asiann cultures and travel information.
BBC Food has a database of over 10,000 recipes that can be searched by recipe title, chef or program. Also has feature of entering up to 3 ingredients for compatible recipes. Suggested by Torresmagnifico.
CookBooks.com supposedly has over 1 million recipes in its database that can be searched in every way imaginable, including ingredients. The only problem is the number of hits you get, so you have to get pretty specific. Information provided by Phil.
EatingWell offers information and recipes on healthy eating. They have a nice category listing, including vegetarian, children and drink recipes among others. In spite of being healthy, the recipes look tasty. Thanks to Mrs. J for this.
EllySaysOpa the very tempting recipes and and ramblings of a Greek cook who also offers Mexican/TexMex recipes. Elly resides in my former home town of Chicago, where the Greeks are well known experts in the restaurant business. Suggested by Midnight Cowboy, who says everything he has tried here has been excellent.
Epicurious has a large database of recipes that can be browsed in a good variety of ways.
Foodista bills itself as the food encyclopedia that everyone can edit.. This wiki approach has resulted in a large number of recipes available as well as other cooking and dining information. Suggested by mrsound.
FoodNetwork I found this site a bit difficult to get around and originally did not include it in my listing. But when redforever suggested it, I realized that if you follow the food network, or one of its shows, you could get to something you want quickly. So here it is thanks again to redforever.
GodeCookery is a medieval history website dedicated to the food & feasts of the Middle Ages & Renaissance. Here you will find information on medieval cooking, instructions for preparing authentic feasts, hundreds of recipes, image collections, a medieval cooking discussion group, graphics, photographs, and history resources.
MedievalCookery offers a large selection of medieval recipes, information on spices for the period and where to get the spices as well as other general information on medieval cooking. This site has a large listing of links to online medieval cookbooks. (See link above in cookbook section)
MidwestLiving has recipes and, with registration, a place for you to create your own cookbook online. Suggested by Cathy of PuzzlEd.
Food Blogs
This section was inspired by and is a collection of sites from a post by redforever. These first four sites cull recipes from a number of food blogs and present a picture of the final result. If you like the picture, click on it and off you go to the recipe. The fifth site is a search engine for recipes at 3000 blogs. The final site is a blog that has the unique feature of video presentation of the recipes.
FoodGawker 2230 pages with about 50 pictures per page makes for a lot of temptation and recipes.
FoodPornDaily not as many pictures (recipes) at once, but a nice collection that I assume changes regularly.
PhotoGrazing another tempting site with a large collection.
TasteSpotting 3491 pages of pictures (recipes) and they throw some good looking desserts right up front.
FoodBlogSearch Just a plain site with a search engine that allows you to search for a recipe through 3000 food blogs.
FoodWishesVideoRecipes a unique video presentation of some very unique recipes from Chef John. His Mother's Day recipe is a "Potted Plant Ice Cream Cake".
Top Ten Food Blogs A listing of the favorite food blogs of Rhiannon, a regular contributor here at TechSupportAlert. Some good information in the comments also.
Wine & Other Alcohol
DrinkNation has a large database of alcoholic drinks that can be browsed in a variety of ways. They also have a "Your Bar" feature where you enter all the drink ingredients that you have and it gives drink recipes for those that can be made from your bar. This information can be saved there if you register.
QuickFound has a large listing of free books on wine available for download in pdf.
TheWebtender has a good size database of alcoholic drinks that can be browsed, searched in various ways and they also have an "In My Bar" feature where you enter in all the ingredients that you have and it will list all the drinks that can be made from those ingredients.
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Comments
You should add food.com and recipeland.com they are great sites.
This site has been updated and all links have been checked as of October 12, 2011.
thanks to all for the suggestions.
Steve
Please add eatingwell.com to your recipe sites. It has great healthy recipes.
Thank you for this comprehensice list of cookbooks and other resources - it is great to have them all in the one place. Bookmarked.
"Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project" has a collection of 76 American cookbooks from the 18th century to the early 20th century. It's a wonderful resource from Michigan State University.
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/
Thank you very much.
That is an excellent resource.
I will add in to the list soon.
Steve
I am looking for some great Italian Recipes that would be fast and easy. Do you know of any? I found a few here: http://www.annamariavolpi.com
Thank you for the nice site.
I will add in to the list soon.
Sorry for not responding sooner, I was in the mountains and had very weak internet access.
Steve
To your food blog category add the king of food blogs and forums: eGullet.org
Not sure I am at the right place on this:
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?
Looks to have some good recipes and info, but not sure if it is a blog entry.
Is this the site you were referencing-if not could you post a link?
Steve
It is also a good idea to look at various food blogs.
I like to use some of these type sites. You can actually look at the recipe prepared first and then go check out the recipe if it is something that appeals to you.
I have found that usually if you like the looks of one recipe, try it, and you like it, then quite often there are other recipes on that blog that will appeal to you. So here are a couple of food porn sites:)))))
Just click on the picture of the food you like, you will be taken to the blog for the recipe, method, and the like.
http://foodgawker.com/
http://www.bloglovin.com/en/blog/375585/foodporndaily
http://www.tastespotting.com/
http://photograzing.seriouseats.com/
And this site will give you a huge list of food blogs you can search recipes for. If the recipe you are looking for is there, you will be given a choice or choices of food blogs to check things out.
http://foodblogsearch.com/
I see that epicurious.com has already been mentioned. That is a great site. The Food Network is also great, and for any that follow that on TV, or have favorite chefs on that TV show, many of their recipes are on the web site.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/
For a great selection of food videos, with very good explanations, you should check out Chef John. Great sense of humor, great video instruction, great recipes.
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/
And I better stop now...I follow too many food blogs, too many food sites, buy too many cookbooks, buy too many food magazines.....
It all looks good to me and so I started a new "food blog" section.
I also added in food network. When I originally went there I did not like the layout and thought it was too hard to find recipes. When I read your post I realized if someone followed a show (I never watch it) they would know where to go quickly. So in it goes.
Thanks for you efforts.
If you have any comments or corrections on the above entries-don't hesitate to post back.
Steve
May 7, 2008-oops (2011)-how did I do that?
Added new sites and checked links-so all should be working, free and clean.
I believe I put in all the suggestions here. If not, please re-post.
Thanks again for the suggestions-they are most helpful.
Any new sites or correction, please post.
Thanks
Steve
What year was that? I guess either an excess of liquid support or had a Tardis for birthday :)
I do not know where that came from!
I have spaced out one year off at times-but nothing like that-wishful thinking as I get near 60?
Steve
For many years, Greece (and in particular the islands) was the place I used to escape to, often several times a year. I've done the "book thing" for Greek recipes but through all my travels this list here wants some real beating.
http://ellysaysopa.com/
I've never found anything here that "didn't work" or didn't please those it was served up to :)
Includes Mexican dishes too.
Looks good. I like the way she writes-makes me hungry.
It will go in next update.
Thanks
Steve
Update: Added
I have been away for a while, but have updated this page.
All links are working.
If you have any sites you know of offering free books (legitimately) in this genre, please post here and I will add.
Please, if you find any dead/bad links or other errors in the list, post them here.
Thanks
Steve
Can I suggest a site to be added on the list of recipe sites?
The site is Foodista (http://www.foodista.com/) it's The Cooking Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit.
I was away when you posted this, but I will add in soon.
I have cleaned up the existing links and will add new ones, including your very good link, in the next few days.
Thanks for this
Steve
Edit: Added in
I like the idea of recipezaar; I also came across a make-your-own cookbook at Better Homes and Gardens (though their site is very slow if you have dial-up internet): http://freebies.about.com/od/freeprintables/p/createcookboook.htm
I was actually looking for good recipe books for kids- any suggestions? I thought I might have to make my own, but that's very time-consuming.
Thanks,
Cathy.
Cathy
Thanks for the BHG link. I'll add that site in.
I had looked for cookbooks for children before and the only ones I found interesting were the "homemade" ones at Recipezaar:
https://secure.recipezaar.com/cookbooks.php?s_type=%2Fcookbooks.php&q=ch...
There are a number of non-free ones, but I did not take a good look at them.
Steve
Edit: Now showing up as "Midwest Living" and added in.
Hi Steve,
I forgot to mention RecipeZaar, it has 385,000 recipes and if you become a member -by simply supplying an e-mail address- you can save your favourite recipes in your own personal cookbook. You can search by recipe or ingredient and then filter by category or nutrition. The latter I think is an excellent filter for people on restricted diets such as diabetics and others with high cholesterol etc.
https://secure.recipezaar.com/
Enjoy!
Torresmagnifico
Nice site. I like the fact that other peoples' cookbooks are available also.
Plus you gave a secure (https) link.
Thanks again
Steve
Edit: Unfortunately, this site was bought out and is no longer up.
Try this, OK they are not books but there are over 10,000 recipes, which you can search for by ingredients, TV show or chef!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/
Torresmagnifico
I originally was not adding recipe sites, but then I decided that they are just as valuable as books if they have good recipes.
So I will add the site you suggest in when I have time.
Thanks
Steve
Edit: I notice they also have a search by ingredient feature.
I live in a small country town in Australia - these sites will be invaluable as I love cooking different things, but if I buy another cook book or food magazine - my bookshelf in the kitchen will collapse.
Thanks!!
jellibabi557
What a great list...there are definitely a ton of books available, however, I don't have time to go through them all so I would appreciate it if anyone could recommend a book/site that would make recipe/meal recommendations based on ingredients that I type in (already have in the house). The same would be incredibly handy for mixed drinks as well. Since I'm at work I'm unable to devote the appropriate search time now and will likely forget by the time I get home and my attention is fully diverted to/by my 16 month old.
Thanks in advance,
-John
try www.epicurious.com
Good site.
I will add in above when I get a chance.
Thanks
Steve
Edit: Added
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