Cooking, Food & Wine Title Generator
A cookbook title has to tell a hungry browser what's for dinner and whose kitchen they're in. Generate titles for weeknight cookbooks, regional collections, baking books, food memoirs and wine guides.
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Tuesday Rice
Weeknight rice bowls built from pantry staples
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Ferment Small: Crocks, Jars and One-Quart Batches
Small-batch fermenting for apartment kitchens
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What's in Nonna's Freezer?
Italian-American make-ahead cooking for busy families
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Smoke and Lime: Cooking Over Wood in Oaxaca
Regional Mexican live-fire recipes and the cooks behind them
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Butter First
Pastry fundamentals that start with laminated dough
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Okra Season: Recipes From the Carolina Lowcountry
Southern coastal home cooking through the summer
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Pour the Other One
A relaxed guide to choosing wine for dinner parties
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Bao Sunday
Weekend dumpling and steamed bun projects
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Mrs. Okafor's Kitchen: Nigerian Home Cooking
Family recipes from a Lagos-born home cook
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Leftover Logic
Turning one night's dinner into the next night's meal
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Below the Cellar Door: Natural Wine Without the Jargon
Low-intervention wine explained for curious drinkers
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The Salt Year: Twelve Months of Preserving
Pickling, curing and canning through the seasons
Naming Cooking, Food & Wine books: what works
This genre indulges in the culinary world, from exotic cuisines to the art of winemaking, offering a feast for food lovers and chefs alike.
Your titles should whet the appetite, reflecting the richness of flavors, culinary techniques, or the cultural heritage of cuisine.
Say the cuisine or the ingredient
Unless your name is already famous, the title should tell readers what they'll cook. Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast lists the four ingredients of bread, so its subtitle has little left to explain. Melissa Clark's Dinner in French gives the meal and the cuisine in three words.
Lead with the place when there is one
Restaurant and regional cookbooks use the place as the brand. The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers is named for the San Francisco restaurant, and Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons is built around a farmer's calendar, with 'A New Way with Vegetables' to explain it.
Name the problem the recipes solve
Weeknight, one-pan, make-ahead, small-batch, for two: these are words people type into a search bar at five in the afternoon. If your book exists to solve a real kitchen problem, put that problem in the subtitle in the reader's own words.
Give wine books some wit
Wine readers are wary of anything that sounds like a sommelier exam. Bianca Bosker's Cork Dork is a joke and a confession, and Wine Folly by Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack promises a guide that doesn't take itself too seriously. Keep the jargon for the inside pages.
Well-known Cooking, Food & Wine titles
Titles that already work in this genre. Read them for shape and length: how many words, how much they give away, what they leave out.
| Title | Author | Published |
|---|---|---|
| Mastering the Art of French Cooking | Julia Child | 1961 |
| The Joy of Cooking | Irma S. Rombauer | 1931 |
| Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat | Samin Nosrat | 2017 |
| The Flavor Bible | Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg | 2008 |
| Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking | Marcella Hazan | 1992 |
| How to Cook Everything | Mark Bittman | 1998 |
| Ottolenghi: The Cookbook | Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi | 2008 |
| Baking: From My Home to Yours | Dorie Greenspan | 2006 |
| The French Laundry Cookbook | Thomas Keller | 1999 |
| Vegetable Kingdom | Bryant Terry | 2020 |
| Jerusalem: A Cookbook | Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi | 2012 |
| The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook | America's Test Kitchen | 2016 |
| Plenty | Yotam Ottolenghi | 2010 |
| Momofuku | David Chang and Peter Meehan | 2009 |
| The Whole30 | Melissa Hartwig Urban and Dallas Hartwig | 2015 |
| The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook | Ina Garten | 1999 |
| Veganomicon | Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero | 2007 |
| Magnolia Table | Joanna Gaines | 2018 |
| The Professional Chef | The Culinary Institute of America | 1984 |
| The Science of Good Cooking | Cook's Illustrated Magazine | 2012 |
Art, Architecture, & PhotographyPhotobooks, architecture monographs, criticism and how-to-draw manuals all share this shelf, and each one names itself differently.
Astrology, Divination & TarotName your tarot guide, birth-chart workbook or rune handbook.
Biographies & MemoirsFind a title for your memoir, or for the biography you've spent years researching, that sounds like a life and not a resume.
Business & InvestingBusiness books live or die on a short title and a subtitle that states the promise.
Crafts & HobbiesKnitters, quilters, potters and whittlers all scan the shelf for their own craft first.
Current Affairs & PoliticsPolitical books argue, report or confess, and the title has to say which.
Diet, Health, & FitnessName your training plan, healthy cookbook or movement guide with a title that says what the reader will actually do.
Education & ReferenceTextbooks, handbooks, dictionaries and teaching guides need titles that tell a student or teacher exactly what's inside.
EngineeringEngineering books range from bridge histories to circuit design manuals, and their titles split the same way.
HistoryHistory titles usually make a promise twice: once in a short title that sets a scene, and again in a subtitle that names the period and the stakes.
Home & GardenGardeners shop for their conditions and decorators shop for a feeling.
HumorA funny book's title is its first joke, and readers judge the whole book by it.
Music, Film, & Performing ArtsRock memoirs, film criticism, acting manuals and theater histories each borrow from the art they cover.
NatureNature books are usually about one bird, one shore, one forest, watched closely.
New Age & Alternative BeliefsTitles for books on energy work, manifestation, crystals, channeling and the inner life.
Parenting & FamilyParents shop for these books at 2 a.m.
PetsTitles for dog training manuals, cat behavior guides, rabbit and reptile care, and the memoir about the dog who changed everything.
PhilosophyTitles for books that ask how to live, what we owe each other, and whether we can know anything at all.
Politics & Political ScienceTitles for books on elections, institutions, policy fights and the ideas behind them.
ReligionTitles for devotionals, Bible studies, theology, faith memoirs and books on Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu practice.
Role Playing & Fantasy GamesTitles for core rulebooks, setting sourcebooks, adventure modules, game master advice and histories of the hobby.
ScienceTitles for popular science on genes, galaxies, microbes, the brain and the people who study them.
Computers & TechnologyTitles for programming guides, engineering handbooks, security books and histories of the industry.
Self-Help & RelationshipsTitles for books on habits, confidence, boundaries, dating, marriage and recovering from hard years.
Social SciencesTitles for books on why people behave, gather, trade and believe as they do.
SportsTitles for athlete memoirs, season-long team stories, coaching manuals and histories of the game.
Study Aids & Test PrepTitles for exam prep books, study guides, flashcard sets and revision workbooks.
True CrimeTitles for books on murders, frauds, cold cases and the investigators who wouldn't let go.
TravelTitles for travel memoirs, walking books, road trips, food travel and practical guidebooks.
WeddingsTitles for wedding planners, budget guides, etiquette books, toast and vow helpers, and memoirs of a big day gone sideways.
Women's StudiesTitles for feminist essays, women's history, gender research and memoirs about women's work, bodies and power.
A plot, a first scene, a shelf
Questions about Cooking, Food & Wine titles
Should a cookbook title include the cuisine?
If readers don't know you yet, yes, in the title or subtitle. 'Oaxacan', 'Korean home cooking' or 'Lowcountry' is exactly what people search for. Chefs with a following can rely on their name or restaurant instead.
Does my title need the word 'cookbook'?
Not in the main title, but it helps somewhere. Many books put 'Recipes' or 'A Cookbook' in the subtitle so retailers and readers file it correctly, especially when the main title is a phrase like a novel's.
How do I title a food memoir with recipes?
Lead with the story and let the subtitle mention the recipes. Gabrielle Hamilton's *Blood, Bones & Butter* reads like a memoir first, which is what it is. If the recipes are half the book, say 'with Recipes' so cooks don't miss it.
A title deserves a book.
Put it on a cover, write the first chapter under it, and see if it holds.
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