Jewish cookbooks may be subdivided into a number of categories:  

• General/descriptive, for example Joan Nathan, Jewish Cooking in America; Gil Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish food.  Early Jewish cookbooks such as Esther Levy's Jewish cookery book, on principles of economy were often similar to general purpose cookbooks such as Fannie Farmer's classic The Boston Cooking-School cook book; some weren't even kosher.
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• Ethnic/Regional/International, such as Sephardic; or Aromas of Aleppo; Matzoh Ball Gumbo. Pre-state and early Israeli cookbooks often served as guides to unfamiliar ingredients and cooking techniques for new immigrants, such as Sefer ha-bishul (The Cookbook), published by WIZO in 1948. Ketsad mevashlim bi-yeme milḥamah? (How to cook in wartime, 1942) provides evidence of hard times
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• “Elegant"/aspirational (perhaps the antithesis of ethnic); Susie Fishbein, Kosher by design:picture perfect food for the holidays and every day may be this category’s exemplar
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• Organizational/charity, compiled by members of congregation sisterhoods, Hadassah, ORT, and others. Out of Our Kitchen Closets: San Francisco gay Jewish cooking, from Congregation Shaar Zahav in San Francisco; and Noodles to Strudles, from the Sisterhood of Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, CA, are two Bay Area examples. Organizational cookbooks vary widely in their interpretation of and adherence to kashrut
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• Commercial cookbooks and culinary ephemera: cookbooks and pamphlets that promote products or businesses
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• Jewish restaurant cookbooks, many with a heavy nostalgia component.  Examples include Schwartz's Hebrew Delicatessen: the story; The 2nd Ave Deli cookbook; Inside the Jewish bakery: recipes and memories from the golden age of Jewish baking
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• Dietary trends meet kosher cuisine: vegetarian; low calorie; fat-free; vegan; gluten-free. One of the first examples of an Israeli diet cookbook is Harzayah neʻimah: kasher (Eat and stay slim, 1978), a Better Homes and Gardens publication translated into Hebrew and adapted for kosher dietary laws by noted Israeli cookbook author Ruth Sirkis