5 Ingredients

Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook, 5 Ingredients, has so far racked up sales of 944,916 copies, and is shifting around 3,000–4,000 a week through Nielsen BookScan. His 2016 titles—Jamie’s Christmas Cookbook and Super Food Family Classics—achieved the still impressive but lower sales of 228,128 copies and 176,437 respectively. So why has 5 Ingredients been so successful? According to his publisher, Oliver knows what every cookery reader wants: straightforward, simple recipes, made with readily available ingredients, with a photograph of the finished meal.

Oliver came up with the idea for a collection of recipes using only five ingredients in 2017, after being inspired by the public on social media. The team at Penguin Random House created a particular visual look, taking individual shots of each element in every recipe to print a visual ingredients list, something it claimed had never been done before. It then put together a PR and marketing campaign which helped first-week sales reach 37,000.

The judges of the Non-Fiction: Lifestyle category praised both the content and the design; one said: “The concept works for all kinds of people and it has opened up cookbooks to people who wouldn’t normally buy cookbooks.”

A second added: “My grandad bought it and it’s probably the first cookbook he’s ever bought or used, which really opened my eyes to who is buying it.”