23 Cookbook Fonts that Are the Secret Ingredient for a Perfect Cover

Unique appetizing dishes, good photo or illustration, clever title… Only one thing is missing in this recipe for a perfect cookbook cover design, and that is a good font. Check out 23 of them that will perfectly tie all the ingredients.

If you’re working on a cookbook, compiling family recipes, or simply doing research for designing a good cookbook cover, chances are you need suggestions for a good cookbook font too. If you need inspiration, look no further: we have a list of 16 Appetizing Cookbook Cover Ideas, and now we’ll also dig deeper into good cookbook fonts as well.

Handwritten fonts

Cursive, handwritten and slightly decorative fonts aren’t the typical choice for book cover design since they are more noisy and in-your-face. But a cookbook isn’t any book—it’s homely, colorful, playful and accepting of more flair. And a handwritten font can give exactly that homemade feel to your cookbook cover when combined well with the other design elements.

1. Billion Dreams (free for personal use)

Billion Dreams is a lovely font with elegant ligatures and alternate styles that can easily fit your cookbook cover design. Even though it is cursive, it’s still legible and the thick brushstrokes make it a stylish typeface that will give personality to your cover.

2. Wild Hazelnut (free for personal use)

Another free-flowing and versatile typeface, but slightly more legible because it’s not fully cursive. It is a cute and intricate font that will add some extra taste to your design.

3. Sharpie Pro Typeface (purchase only)

If you want to add zest and youthfulness to your design, look no further than this font. It is creative and fun, but legible and practical. It will look great combined with a simple sans serif as a secondary font.

4. Sophia (free)

This hand-lettered brush style typeface is feminine and sweet and will make a great combination with a colorful illustration cover, like in this cute example. The font pack has both uppercase and lowercase letters, extra styles and ornaments, so you won’t run out of combinations for sure.

5. Bold Lining (free for personal use)

If you want a handwritten font that is still not extremely decorative and has a sterner structure, this marker font is the right choice. It will be a great addition to a cookbook cover that is designed in the style of a family recipe book, or a design with a scrapbook feel to it.

6. Wild Blood (free for personal use)

And here is another example of a signature cursive font, this time an extremely elegant and thin one. It makes for a pretty and stylish solution, but be wary that it might not be visible if you add it to a colorful and noisy background.

Simple and crisp cookbook typography

Like any good recipe, there is one basic, very simple element that allows for experimentation and creativity with everything else around it. You can use this age-old approach when it comes to fonts too: opt for a simple one and let the photography or illustration on your cover be the centerpiece. Here are some simple but captivating logos that will look beautiful on your cookbook cover.

7. Coolvetica (free)

Coolvetica is a fairly well-known and widely used font, sort of like how eggs or salt go with almost anything. It is a sans serif font based on Helvetica (but cooler, as the name suggests). Pair it with thin script secondary font, or simply over a classy photograph of the dishes your readers will soon be cooking up.

8. Caviar Dreams (free)

A font that has “caviar” in its name must be a delicacy, right? This lovely and classy sans serif font has sharp edges and more geometric shapes, that will add a dash of elegance and stylishness to your cover.

9. Arca Majora 3 (free for personal use)

The third version and upgrade of the Arca Majora typeface is a slightly bolder and more noticeable option than the other simple sans serif fonts, based on geometrical shapes and possessing strong legibility.

10. Morn (free for personal use)

Morn is a font family consisting of 22 different styles, the base of which is a sharp geometric font with a roman proportion. Each of the characters comes from either a circle or a triangle shape. It supports many European languages, not just the standard English alphabet.

11. Raspoutine (donationware)

This basic, but elegant sans serif font has very subtle curvature and is slightly italic, while still maintaining the legibility and classiness. It vaguely resembles the Nesquik font, but it is more stern and versatile.

12. Clemente (free)

This elegant sans serif has unique angles of the letters, that makes it perfectly suitable for headlines and book cover titles. It is stylish but clean and non-decorative, so it will go perfectly with a captivating photograph for your cover.

Classy fonts

Sure, simplicity is evergreen, but classiness doesn’t go out of fashion either. Like a good dinner table, you will need a classy detail, and these fonts might be the perfect addition.

13. Rustler Barter (free for personal use)

This modern serif inspired by the Art Deco style is a beautiful addition that will introduce some extra flair to your design. As the designer says, it “perfectly represents vintage aesthetics in a modern and minimalist way”.

14. Crafter (free)

Crafter is a typeface inspired by vintage metal signs and sign painters, that has a low x height and two unique styles. It would make a great cookbook title if you opt for a vintage and retro design of your cover.

15. Dilemma (purchase only)

This Dilemma family can really put you in a dilemma, because it has both a serif and a sans serif font, as well as 42 styles, 3 widths and 7 weights in both versions. It is an option that offers ambiguity and a ying-yang combination of two very similar, but far from identical fonts.

16. New Rachel (purchase only)

New Rachel is a modern serif typeface, inspired by the classic and famous Bodoni font and lapidary Roman typeface. As in Bodoni characters, Rachel is characterized by a strong contrast between thin and thick rods.

17. Megante (free for personal use)

This classy typeface has some unique ligatures that end abruptly, and organic circular forms that will grace the design of your cookbook cover with their presence.

18. Modric (demo)

Modric is an all caps condensed sans serif. Use it if you're going for a stirring effect between a colorful cover and a classy, stern font. The package includes multilingual characters too.

Decorative

For those of you who need to impress and attract the attention of the reader from the very start, a decorative font could do wonders. You should keep in mind that it might be too much if you already have a colorful and illustrated cover, so use it sparingly.

19. Brayline (purchase only)

This fancy decorative typeface is a monoline swashed script inspired by Old Neon Signs. With it, you’ll get more than 400 glyphs and alternative characters.

According to the creator, it is suitable to use on different design projects such as signage, book covers, invitations, packaging, logotypes and more.

20. Fontastique (free for personal use)

Fontastique is a unique and subtle sans serif, that flows perfectly and will add some pizzazz to your cookbook cover design for sure. Based on circular shapes, it isn’t cursive but it has some calligraphic features that will add class but still stay legible.

21. New Forest (purchase only)

New Forest is a modern font inspired by the Art Nouveau movement, that comes in two styles: regular and italic with a total of 853 glyphs. With its luscious curvature and elegant serifs, it makes for a tasteful option for a title font.

22. Sage (purchase only)

This fashionable and refreshing font is based on the Didot font, known for the drastic differences between the thick and thin lines. It pairs great with a minimal and subtle script font.

23. Springfield (purchase only)

If you want cute calligraphic typography and some simple doodles that will further decorate your cookbook cover, go Springfield is the font for you. It will for sure offer a scrapbook aesthetic to your cookbook.