The Best Cookbooks for Holiday Gifts 2017

If you were shopping for a food lover in 2017, you had a very serious problem: the cookbook shelf was absurdly good. Not “Oh, that one looks nice next to the fruit bowl” good. More like “I came here to buy one gift and somehow left with a stack and a vague plan to reorganize my kitchen” good.

That year delivered a rare mix of books that were useful, beautiful, and actually cookable. Some taught home cooks how flavor works. Some made vegetables feel glamorous instead of obligatory. Some turned baking into a history lesson with butter. And some offered weeknight salvation for the kind of person who stares into the refrigerator at 6:12 p.m. and hopes dinner will invent itself.

If you are looking back at the best cookbooks for holiday gifts 2017 had to offer, this guide rounds up the titles that felt most gift-worthy, most talked-about, and most likely to earn permanent counter space. In other words, these are the books that did more than look pretty under the tree. They earned flour smudges, sticky notes, and the occasional “Wait, why did no one tell me cauliflower could do this?” moment.

Why 2017 Was a Banner Year for Cookbook Gifts

The strongest cookbook gifts do at least one of three things: teach, inspire, or rescue. The 2017 class somehow managed all three. It gave beginners confidence, gave experienced cooks new obsessions, and gave gift-givers an easy win. Instead of one dominant trend, there was a delicious pile-up of styles: vegetable-forward cooking, baking deep-dives, global cuisine, practical weeknight cooking, and books that read almost like memoirs with recipes tucked inside.

That matters during the holidays. A good cookbook gift should feel personal. It should say, “I saw your pasta habit and chose chaos responsibly,” or “You keep talking about learning to bake, so now you have no excuse.” The best 2017 cookbooks worked because they matched real people with real appetites: the dinner procrastinator, the weekend baker, the vegetable enthusiast, the culinary nerd, the traveler who cooks, and the friend who says, “Let’s just stay in,” then serves something wildly impressive.

How to Choose the Right Cookbook Gift

Before you wrap anything, think about the cook, not just the cuisine. A great holiday cookbook gift is less about trendiness and more about fit.

• For beginners: choose books that explain technique clearly and do not assume a culinary degree or a marble pastry slab.
• For busy home cooks: pick books with flexible, weeknight-friendly recipes and practical pantry thinking.
• For serious hobby cooks: go for depth, strong writing, and books that teach the “why,” not just the “how.”
• For bakers: choose a book with precision, strong visuals, and recipes people will actually want to make more than once.
• For collectors: beauty matters. So does personality. A gift book should feel like an event when it lands on the coffee table.

The Best Cookbooks for Holiday Gifts 2017

1. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat

Best for: the cook who wants to understand food, not just follow recipes.

This was the breakout gift book of the year for good reason. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat does something many cookbooks promise and few deliver: it genuinely teaches. Instead of chaining readers to exact measurements and nervous obedience, it explains the four elements that shape great cooking. That makes it ideal for beginners, but it is just as useful for experienced cooks who want sharper instincts. Gift this to the person who asks why roast chicken from one kitchen tastes magical and another tastes like a polite apology.

2. Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg

Best for: vegetable lovers, farmers’ market fanatics, and anyone trying to make produce less boring.

Six Seasons helped redefine vegetable cooking in 2017. It made salads feel thrilling, not virtuous. McFadden treats vegetables with a cook’s swagger, layering raw, roasted, charred, pickled, and crunchy elements until even celery starts acting like the main character. As a holiday gift, this one works beautifully for someone who is curious about seasonal cooking but does not want a preachy wellness manual. It is practical, handsome, and quietly transformative.

3. BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts by Stella Parks

Best for: bakers, nostalgia junkies, and dessert people who treat pie as a personality trait.

If 2017 had a dessert heavyweight, this was it. BraveTart is the kind of baking book that makes you want to clear your weekend schedule and buy too much butter on purpose. Parks goes beyond recipes and digs into the history, science, and cultural backstory of classic American sweets. The result is a baking book with brains, charm, and serious sugar authority. It is a terrific holiday gift because it feels generous: big, fun, ambitious, and packed with recipes that make people gasp a little when dessert arrives.

4. Dinner: Changing the Game by Melissa Clark

Best for: busy home cooks who need dinner ideas that do not feel tired.

Every holiday season includes at least one person who says, “Don’t get me anything,” and then complains about making the same three dinners forever. This is their book. Melissa Clark has a gift for making everyday cooking feel fresh without making it feel fussy. The recipes are approachable, full of flavor, and designed for people who live in the real world, where Tuesday happens every week and energy is not always abundant. As a cookbook gift, this is the practical hero pick.

5. Smitten Kitchen Every Day by Deb Perelman

Best for: home cooks who want comfort food with brains and zero culinary snobbery.

Deb Perelman has always had a talent for making readers feel like they can absolutely pull this off, even if they are cooking in a tiny kitchen while half-listening to a podcast and wondering whether they forgot to buy lemons. Smitten Kitchen Every Day captures that same warm, witty spirit. The recipes are unfussy, satisfying, and deeply giftable because they feel useful right away. This is the cookbook for the friend who wants food that is cozy, clever, and reliable.

6. Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh

Best for: bakers who like beauty, flavor, and a little dramatic flair.

Sweet is not shy. It is lush, fragrant, and packed with desserts that feel festive before they even hit the plate. Ottolenghi and Goh bring spice, texture, color, and elegance to baking in a way that feels celebratory without being inaccessible. This makes it one of the best holiday cookbook gifts of 2017 for someone who loves to bake for gatherings, cookie swaps, or any event where pistachios and cardamom can reasonably be considered a mood.

7. Tartine All Day by Elisabeth Prueitt

Best for: gluten-free cooks, wellness-minded bakers, and anyone who wants modern comfort food.

This book earns its place because it never feels like a compromise. Tartine All Day embraces gluten-free and flexible home cooking without draining it of joy. It is the sort of cookbook you give to someone who wants food that feels current, wholesome, and deeply satisfying rather than merely “good for you.” During the holidays, that is a winning combination. It says, “I know your style, and I also know you deserve recipes that taste excellent.”

8. Dining In by Alison Roman

Best for: stylish home cooks who like bold flavors and a low-key dinner party vibe.

Dining In landed with the energy of someone who casually brings the best dish to the party and then claims it was nothing. Roman’s recipes feel modern, relaxed, and a little bit cool without becoming intimidating. There is plenty of flavor, plenty of attitude, and a strong sense that staying home can be more fun than going out if the food is this good. This is a smart cookbook gift for the friend who loves anchovies, citrus, roasted things, and the idea of making simple food feel slightly glamorous.

9. Istanbul & Beyond by Robyn Eckhardt and David Hagerman

Best for: curious cooks, travelers, and readers who love food writing as much as recipes.

Some cookbook gifts are really passports in hardcover. Istanbul & Beyond is one of them. It explores the diversity of Turkish cooking with depth, storytelling, and a strong sense of place. That makes it a wonderful gift for someone who likes to learn while they cook. It is not just about putting dinner on the table. It is about widening the table entirely. If your recipient loves regional food traditions, rich culinary context, and beautiful books, this one feels especially memorable.

10. The Pho Cookbook by Andrea Nguyen

Best for: soup lovers, noodle obsessives, and cooks ready to graduate from takeout dependence.

The best niche cookbook gifts solve a very specific craving, and this one does exactly that. The Pho Cookbook makes Vietnamese noodle soup feel far more approachable than many home cooks assume. It is a thoughtful pick for anyone who loves warm, aromatic, deeply comforting food and wants to understand the components instead of just admiring them from the restaurant table. Bonus points if your gift recipient already owns too many bowls and is somehow still buying more.

11. Back Pocket Pasta by Colu Henry

Best for: people who want fast dinners that still feel chic.

Pasta books are easy to dismiss until one shows up and quietly improves your life. Back Pocket Pasta is that book. It is built around the idea that a well-stocked pantry and a few smart ingredients can turn weeknight cooking into something both quick and elegant. That makes it ideal for gift-giving: specific enough to feel thoughtful, practical enough to earn regular use, and delicious enough to keep the wrapping paper from hitting the floor before someone says, “Okay, I’m making this first.”

12. On Vegetables by Jeremy Fox

Best for: ambitious cooks and the person who reads recipes like blueprints.

This is the pick for the serious cook on your list. On Vegetables is not the easiest book in the stack, and that is exactly why some people will adore it. It is more technique-driven, more chef-minded, and more demanding than the average weeknight guide. But for the right recipient, that is part of the thrill. Holiday gifts do not always have to be easy; sometimes they should be aspirational. This one says, “I believe you are the kind of person who can absolutely pull off miso bagna cauda.”

Which 2017 Cookbook Gift Was the Safest Bet?

If you wanted one almost-universally smart gift in 2017, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat was probably the cleanest answer. It worked for beginners, intermediate cooks, and cookbook collectors. If you wanted the prettiest crowd-pleaser for bakers, Sweet and BraveTart were hard to beat. If you wanted something practical for a friend who cooks after work and not as a competitive sport, Dinner: Changing the Game and Smitten Kitchen Every Day were excellent picks.

But the real secret of the best cookbook gifts in 2017 was this: the strongest books felt like they had a point of view. They were not bland compilations of random recipes wearing a nice jacket. They had personality. They taught something. They invited readers into a world.

Experience: Why Holiday Cookbook Gifts from 2017 Still Feel Special

There is something uniquely intimate about giving a cookbook during the holidays. It is not just an object; it is a suggestion about future evenings. It says, “Here is a better Sunday,” or “Here is the pasta phase you were clearly destined for.” That is why the best cookbooks for holiday gifts 2017 produced still feel vivid years later. They were not only seasonal purchases. They became part of people’s kitchens, routines, and family stories.

Think about how these books likely lived in real homes. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat probably sat open on counters while people learned to season more confidently. BraveTart likely appeared before Thanksgiving and never quite left the baking zone. Smitten Kitchen Every Day probably became the “What can I make tonight?” answer more times than its owner could count. And Six Seasons almost certainly convinced a lot of people to buy radishes with a level of optimism they had not previously known.

That is what separates a good cookbook gift from a forgettable one. A forgettable gift gets admired once and shelved forever. A good cookbook becomes stained, bookmarked, debated, and quoted. Someone remembers the first thing they cooked from it. Someone else requests the same dessert again next year. A sibling borrows it and “forgets” to return it. A parent texts a photo of page 147 with three exclamation points and no context. This is the natural lifecycle of a successful holiday cookbook.

There is also a nostalgic charm to the 2017 cookbook moment. It arrived during a time when home cooking still felt deeply aspirational but increasingly personal. People wanted books that looked beautiful, yes, but they also wanted books that matched how they actually lived. Smaller kitchens. Busier schedules. More curiosity about global flavors. More openness to vegetables, pantry cooking, and flexible baking. The best titles from that year answered those needs without losing style.

And perhaps that is why these books still hold up as holiday gifts in retrospect. They were not built around gimmicks. They were built around appetite, confidence, and pleasure. Some made you a better cook. Some made you a more adventurous one. Some simply made you more excited to stay home and feed people. All of those are worthy gifts.

So if you are revisiting the best cookbooks for holiday gifts 2017 gave us, do not think of them as old recommendations. Think of them as proven ones. These are books that survived the hardest test any gift can face: actual use. They were cooked from, talked about, and remembered. In the world of holiday shopping, that is basically a standing ovation with pie.

Conclusion

The best cookbook gifts of 2017 were not all trying to do the same thing, and that is exactly why the year was so strong. Some books taught technique. Some celebrated vegetables. Some turned desserts into edible history. Some made weeknight cooking feel less like a chore and more like a flex. Together, they created one of the most giftable cookbook years in recent memory.

If you were choosing just one, the right answer depended on the cook. For the learner, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. For the baker, BraveTart or Sweet. For the practical home cook, Dinner: Changing the Game or Smitten Kitchen Every Day. For the ingredient romantic, Six Seasons. For the culinary traveler, Istanbul & Beyond. The real win was that 2017 offered a cookbook gift for almost every appetite and personality.

And that is what makes these books worth remembering: they were not just nice presents. They were invitations to cook more, learn more, and eat better. Not bad for something you can wrap with a bow.