A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes. Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food. Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first course, main course, dessert), by main ingredient, by cooking technique, alphabetically, by region or country, and so on. They may include illustrations of finished dishes and preparation steps; discussions of cooking techniques, advice on kitchen equipment, ingredients, and substitutions; historical and cultural notes; and so on. Cookbooks may be written by individual authors, who may be chefs, cooking teachers, or other food writers; they may be written by collectives; or they may be anonymous. They may be addressed to home cooks, to professional restaurant cooks, to institutional cooks, or to more specialized audiences. Some cookbooks are didactic, with detailed recipes addressed to beginners or people learning to cook particular dishes or cuisines; others are simple aide-memoires, which may document the composition of a dish or even precise measurements, but not detailed techniques. History Early works Not all cultures left written records of their culinary practices, but some examples have survived, notably three Akkadian tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, dating to about 1700 BC, large fragments from Archestratus, the Latin Apicius and some texts from the Tang Dynasty. The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is De re coquinaria, written in Latin. An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research. An Apicius came to designate a book of recipes. The current text appears to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from 1483. It records a mix of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine, but with few details on preparation and cooking. An abbreviated epitome entitled Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by Vinidarius, "an illustrious man", was made in the Carolingian era. In spite of its late date it represents the last manifestation of the cuisine of Antiquity. Medieval Asian The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of al-Warraq (an early 10th-century compendium of recipes from the 9th and 10th centuries) and al-Baghdadi (13th century). Manasollasa from India contains recipes of vegetarian and non-vegetarian cuisines, which preceded the cookbook writing history in Europe by a