A video for the upcoming cookbook “La Tartine Gourmande,” based on the blog of the same name, made us wonder whether cookbook trailers — picture a movie trailer, but with charming kitchens and light jazz swapped in for post-apocalyptic underworlds and techno — are slowly becoming as widespread as trailers in other corners of the publishing world.
A dive into YouTube and Vimeo suggests that the answer is yes, with cookbooks from smaller publishers mingling with higher-gloss affairs. A quick survey:
The trailer for “La Tartine Gourmande” features the author Béatrice Peltre in her own sunlit kitchen, her words (spoken with a delectable French accent) dancing over images of her assembling dishes using simple, earthy and surely local ingredients. Gentle, plucky music plays. It is an incredibly inviting ad for a kind of tasteful, homespun lifestyle that is currently all the rage.
La Tartine Gourmande from Unusually Fine on Vimeo.
Then there is Eleven Madison Park’s cookbook trailer, which has no text or narration: The Food Speaks for Itself.
Eleven Madison Park: The Cookbook from Eleven Madison Park on Vimeo.
In addition to producing a trailer done in infomercial style, Nathan Myhrvold devotes a whole YouTube channel to the lessons of “Modernist Cuisine.”
Finally, though BabyCakes released a lovely trailer for its second cookbook, “BabyCakes Covers the Classics,” earlier this year, it is the vegan bakery’s first cookbook trailer, posted three years ago, that remains a standout of the genre.
BabyCakes, the Book of Recipes: It’s Here! from BabyCakes NYC on Vimeo.