Food historian Ian Mosby sits for a portrait in his Toronto home on Tuesday, October 19, 2012. Thousands of cookbooks continue to be published each year, and aficionados love to leaf through the colourful tomes and draw inspiration from photos of completed dishes. While culinary gurus agree it's easy to find a recipe online among the thousands available, they're sometimes leery about whether the concoctions have been tested. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim