Terms of Use

Version 1.0 · Effective 26 August 2026

#Contents

Who we are and what these terms cover
Your account
Reading, quoting and reusing what we publish
What members post
Writing for us
What writers promise
Payment
Conduct, moderation and appeals
Telling us about something on the site
Sponsored content
Recipes are not professional advice
Availability and liability
Changes, and if you joined before these terms
Governing law and disputes
A few last things
Contact

#1. Who we are and what these terms cover

The Cook's Cook is a food publication and a network of writers. Hundreds of contributors write the recipes, essays and columns you read here.

Everything published here is free to read, and always will be. There is no paywall, no trial period and no subscriber tier, and there will not be one. What you can read today you will be able to read in ten years without paying us anything. That is a promise, not a current arrangement.

We may one day sell something — a book, an event, a class, a tool you can pay to use. If we do, it will be something new and additional, and the writing will still be free. What we will never do is put a wall around work that was free when it was published, or make the free version worse to push you towards a paid one.

The site is run by The Cook's Cook LLC, a limited liability company formed in New Hampshire, at 19 Gill Street, Exeter, New Hampshire 03833.

These terms are an agreement between you and us, and they apply whenever you use the site, whether or not you have an account. When you create an account you accept them.

Three groups of people use this site and the terms treat them differently:

Readers and members — anyone who reads, and anyone with a free account. Sections 2, 3, 4 and 8.
Writers — people whose work we publish. Sections 5, 6 and 7 as well.
Columnists and commissioned writers — who also have a separate agreement with us covering their own arrangement and payment. Where that agreement and these terms differ, that agreement wins.

These replace our previous terms and conditions. Section 13 explains what that means if you joined before today.

How we handle your personal information is a separate document — our Privacy Policy. It stands on its own, and nothing in these terms limits what it promises.

#2. Your account

You do not need an account to read anything, and you never will. An account lets you follow writers, save recipes into collections, subscribe to writers by email, comment, and share what you have cooked.

Not all of that is switched on yet. We are enabling the member features in stages. As of 26 August 2026 reading is open to everyone and accounts work; following, saving, collections, comments, community recipes, photographs of what you have cooked, member profiles and writer newsletters are built but not yet live. These terms cover all of them, so they apply from the moment each one arrives. This paragraph is updated as features go live.

Who may have one. You need to be 16 or over. You do not need an account to read anything, and you never will — every recipe and article on the site is free to read and print without one. Writers must be 18 or over.

One person, one account. An account is yours personally. Do not share it and do not keep more than one.

Keep it secure. Use a passkey if you can. Tell us at once if you think someone else has got into your account. We are not responsible for what happens through your account before you tell us.

Accurate details. Give us a real email address and keep it current — it is how we reach you and how you sign in.

Closing your account. You can do it yourself, whenever you like, without asking us. Closure is immediate: the things you posted as a member stop being visible and we stop emailing you. Work published under your byline stays up — see section 5.11. If you change your mind, ask and we can put it back. If you want your information erased rather than set aside, the Privacy Policy explains how — that is a stronger request, and we honour it.

Suspension. We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or where we must for legal or security reasons. Unless it would be unsafe or unlawful, we will tell you why and you can appeal — see section 8.

What happens to what you saved. When an account closes, the follows, saves, collections and subscriptions in it stop being visible and stop being used. What happens to things you posted publicly is section 4; what happens to published work is section 5.

#3. Reading, quoting and reusing what we publish

Everything here is free to read. Almost all of it belongs to the writer who made it, not to us, which shapes what follows.

Yes, please:

Read anything, cook from it, cook from it for money
Print what you like, for yourself. One recipe on a sheet of paper, or everything you have ever saved bound into a book for your own kitchen. Make one for your sister too. It is your copy of things you were always allowed to print
Quote a short passage, with credit and a link back
Link to anything here, from anywhere
Share a link in your newsletter, your group, your class
Adapt a recipe and say so — "adapted from", "inspired by", with credit. Cooking has always worked this way.

No:

Publishing a recipe or article in full somewhere else — another site, an app, a newsletter, or a book you sell or hand out in quantity — without the writer's permission. The line is not whether you printed it, it is whether you are distributing it
Scraping or bulk downloading the site by any automated means
Using anything published here to train, fine-tune or evaluate an AI model, or including it in a dataset built for that purpose
Removing a byline, or presenting someone else's work as your own
Anything that loads the site in a way that interferes with other readers

If you want to do something not on the "yes" list — reprint a recipe, put one in your own cookbook, teach from an essay, include a column in an anthology — email info@thecookscook.com and we will put you in touch with the writer. The answer is often yes. Ask first.

#4. What members post

If you have an account you can publish your own community recipes, leave comments, and upload photographs of things you have cooked.

It stays yours. You keep the copyright in what you post.

What you allow us to do with it. By posting, you give us permission to publish it on the site, keep it there, moderate it, and use it to show the piece it belongs to and the publication around it — our own social accounts included. That permission is non-exclusive, so it stays yours to use anywhere else, and we pay nothing for it because nobody is buying anything.

What we will never do is put your photograph in a sponsor's advertising. That is a different thing from showing off our own work, and we would come and ask you.

If you would rather something of yours were not used beyond the site, tell us and we will take it out of the rotation.

What you are promising us. That it is yours, that you have the right to post it, that it does not infringe anyone else's rights, and that it is not unlawful. If you photographed someone else's food or used someone else's picture, do not post it as yours.

And other people. If there are recognisable people in your photograph, ask them before you post it. Children especially — yours or anyone else's.

Moderation. Comments and images are reviewed before they appear, and we can remove anything that breaks these terms without notice. Section 8 covers conduct and appeals.

#5. Writing for us

5.1 You keep your copyright. Your work stays yours. Publishing it here does not transfer ownership to us — not the words, not the images, not the recipes.

5.2 What you allow us to do. By submitting work for publication you give us permission to:

publish it on the site
edit it for length, clarity and house style
include it in our email digest and in subscriptions to you
use extracts and the featured image to promote the piece and the site
keep it in the archive permanently
let readers print and copy it for their own personal, non-commercial use — a recipe on the fridge, a bound book of their saves for their own kitchen

5.3 What needs your permission each time. We will not syndicate your work to another publication, put it in print, include it in an anthology, translate it, or use it in a sponsor's advertising without asking you first.

5.4 Original to The Cook's Cook. Articles must be original to us — not already published on your own blog or anywhere else. Once we have published a piece, you are free to republish it on your own site after 30 days, with credit and a link back.

Two exceptions: recipes and images may have appeared elsewhere, provided they are your own or properly cleared, and a recipe from a cookbook may be used with written permission. In both cases the head note must be freshly written for us.

5.5 How long this lasts. For as long as the work stays published, and it continues if you stop writing for us. Otherwise the archive would fall apart.

5.6 Passing rights to anyone else. We do not give your work to anyone else, with two exceptions: the companies that run the site for us — hosting, email, search — who may only use it to provide that service, and brand partners on commissioned work, which is section 5.8 and always agreed with you first.

5.7 AI. We will not use your work to train, fine-tune or evaluate an AI model, and we will not give it to anyone else to do so. What we cannot do is stop people who take it without asking — so read that as a promise about our own conduct and about who we hand your work to, which we control, rather than a guarantee about everyone on the internet, which nobody can give. Two things you should know: we send published text to a service that turns it into a mathematical fingerprint so we can recommend related articles — the same text anyone can read on the page, and it does not train anything. And search engines and AI crawlers read public web pages; we set the controls we can set, but we cannot promise everyone obeys them.

What we ask of you in return: do not submit work created by AI. Not the writing, not the recipes, not the images. Using AI to research a subject, organise your notes, or handle a routine technical task is fine. Passing off generated work as your own is not, and it is grounds for us to decline or remove a piece.

5.8 Commissioned work and work with a partner. Some pieces are commissioned — we ask for them, we agree what they will be, and we pay for them on acceptance.

Where a brand is involved, what that brand may use is agreed with you before you start and written into the agreement for that commission. It will say what they may use, for how long, and whether they may pass it on.

Nothing in these terms gives a partner any rights to your work. Only an agreement you have seen and accepted does that.

Commissioned work stays published. It is not withdrawn when an account closes, and 5.11 does not apply to it.

5.9 Images. This covers photographs, illustrations, artwork and anything else visual.

When you send us an image you are telling us either that you made it, or that you have permission from whoever did. If you do not have that permission, do not send it. If it came from somewhere else — a client, a publisher, a brand, a friend, a public-domain archive — tell us where, and tell us how it should be credited.

We need to know who owns an image before we publish it. We cannot credit it properly, or let a partner use it, unless we do — so we will ask, and if you cannot tell us we may not be able to run it.

5.10 Credit and editing. We publish your work under your byline. We will not present it as anyone else's, and we will not make changes that misrepresent what you meant. By submitting work you assert your right to be identified as its author — in the UK that sentence has legal force, and we are glad to give it a home.

We correct typos, spelling and punctuation, and we apply house style, without troubling you about it. If we want to make a substantive change — one that alters your meaning, a method, or a quantity — we show you first.

5.11 Taking work down. Ask us. There is no automatic right to have published work removed, but there is a conversation, and we start it willing to say yes.

Good reasons happen: a piece that turns out to be wrong, a recipe you have changed your mind about, something that has become a problem in your life. Tell us what and why, and we will usually find a way — unpublishing it, updating it, or taking your name off it and leaving it up. Removing your byline is easier to say yes to than removing the work, and it solves most of what people are actually asking for.

Two things we cannot do, whatever we agree. We cannot recall an email that has already gone out to subscribers. And we cannot clear search engines, caches or archives — we will ask them, but the answer is theirs, not ours.

This does not apply to commissioned work, which is 5.8.

5.12 Work published before these terms. If we published your work before these terms existed, it stays published on the basis it was submitted. These terms do not reach backwards: whatever understanding your work was published under — the old site's terms, or none at all — is the one it keeps.

You can still ask us to take it down or remove your byline, under 5.11.

If you are still writing for us, we will ask you to accept these terms. Nobody's work is removed for not replying.

#6. What writers promise

When you submit work for publication, you are telling us that:

6.1 It is yours. You wrote it, you own it, and you have the right to give us the permission in section 5.

6.2 It is original to us, as section 5.4 describes.

6.3 It is your own work, not generated by AI, as section 5.7 describes.

6.4 It does not harm anyone else. It does not infringe anyone's copyright, trade mark or other rights; it is not defamatory; it does not breach anyone's privacy; and it does not break the law.

6.5 Where you make a claim about health, nutrition or science, you can show us where it came from, and the source is a credible one. We do not publish health claims sourced from campaigners, influencers or anyone without the relevant expertise.

6.6 If any of that turns out not to be true — if a rights-holder objects, or someone says a piece is defamatory — tell us as soon as you know, and help us sort it out. We may take the work down while we look into it.

What that costs you. If a claim arises because something you promised above was not true, you are responsible up to the amount we paid you for that piece. If we paid you nothing, you owe us nothing — the promise still matters, and breaking it is grounds for us to stop publishing you, but we are not going to pursue a home cook for money over a photograph. Nothing here limits what we might do about work submitted dishonestly.

#7. Payment

Most people who use this site are not paid, and are not expecting to be. Members are never paid for community recipes, comments or photographs.

Some writers are paid. Columnists are paid regularly under a separate columnist agreement. Other writers are paid for individual pieces we commission, usually where a brand partnership is involved, under an agreement for that commission.

Where we pay for a piece, we pay on acceptance — once we have accepted it for publication, not when it actually appears. We may accept and pay for a piece months before we run it.

The amounts and the details live in those separate agreements, not here. If we ever share revenue with contributors more widely, that will come with its own terms and you will be asked to accept them.

#8. Conduct, moderation and appeals

Be decent to other people here.

Do not post or send anything abusive, harassing, hateful, threatening, rude or deliberately false. Do not impersonate anyone. Do not use the site to advertise without our agreement.

One rule worth spelling out, because it is the one that matters most in a room full of cooks. Tell us about your own cooking, including why you eat the way you do — vegan, vegetarian, religious, hunting, whatever it is. That is welcome and it is interesting. What is not welcome is contempt for anyone else's choices: telling meat eaters they are disgusting, or telling vegans they are ridiculous. Explain yourself as much as you like. Do not attack anyone else for how they eat.

We can remove content that breaks these terms, and suspend or close the account behind it.

If something here breaks the law — the sort of thing the UK's Online Safety Act is about, or its equivalent where you live — section 9 is how you tell us, and we deal with those reports first.

If we act against you we will tell you what we removed and why — including whether a person or an automated system flagged it, and which rule it broke — unless the law stops us. You have at least 30 days to appeal, by emailing info@thecookscook.com. We look at it again properly, with fresh eyes wherever we have someone to spare. We are a small team, so we will not promise you a separate reviewer every time. Nothing here takes away your right to go to court instead.

#9. Telling us about something on the site

We publish work by hundreds of writers and members. If something here is wrong, tell us.

If it infringes your copyright. Send us: what work of yours you say has been infringed; where on our site it is, with a link; your contact details; and a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised and that what you have told us is accurate.

Our designated copyright agent is:

Copyright Agent
The Cook's Cook LLC
19 Gill Street, Exeter, New Hampshire 03833, United States
+1 603 580 5938
admin@thecookscook.com

What the law asks a copyright notice to include. For a formal notice under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, add two things to the list above: your signature — typed is fine — and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.

If you think something is unlawful for another reason — defamatory, harassing, an invasion of someone's privacy, or against the law in some other way — email info@thecookscook.com. Tell us what it is, where it is, and why you think so. Tell us your name and an email address we can reach you on, and that you believe in good faith that what you are telling us is accurate. You do not need to be the person affected.

What happens then. We look at it and decide. We will tell you what we decided. If we take something down, we tell whoever posted it what we removed and why, and they can challenge it — section 8 sets out how.

If something of yours is taken down and you think that was wrong. Tell us — reply to the notice we sent you. Include what was removed and where it was; your name, address and telephone number; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith the material was taken down by mistake or because it was misidentified; and that you accept the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district, or ours if you are outside the United States. We pass what you send to whoever complained. If they do not tell us within ten business days that they have gone to court, we can put the material back.

Repeat infringement. If someone repeatedly posts or submits work that infringes other people's rights, we close their account. We would rather warn than close, and we look at each case on its facts — but the policy is real and we apply it.

#10. Sponsored content

Some of what you read here is paid for. Brands sponsor articles on subjects connected to what they do — a knife maker might pay for a piece about sharpening. The point of these pieces is to teach you something, not to sell you something.

How to spot one. Sponsored articles carry a Sponsored label at the top of the piece, with the sponsor's name alongside it as a Culinary Partner. The first word tells you a brand paid for the piece. The second tells you which brand.

What a sponsor does and does not do. A sponsor agrees the subject with us — a knife maker and an article about sharpening. From there the writer writes it. A sponsor does not write the piece, does not tell the writer what to say about their products, and does not approve it before it runs.

We no longer publish paid product reviews.

Some sponsored pieces link out to the sponsor's own site. We record clicks on those links; what that means for your personal information is in the Privacy Policy.

We give sponsors nothing about you. No email addresses, no audience lists, no segments, no reading history — nothing, ever. The one thing we cannot control is what happens after you click: following a link takes you to the sponsor's own site, and from that point their logs and their privacy policy apply, exactly as they would if you had typed their address yourself.

#11. Recipes are not professional advice

Cooking involves heat, blades, raw ingredients and, sometimes, things people are allergic to. We publish recipes in good faith and our writers know what they are doing, but we are not in your kitchen.

You judge whether a recipe is right for you — allergies, intolerances, medical conditions, and who you are cooking for.
Read the ingredients. If you are cooking for someone with an allergy, check every component yourself. Substitutions change things.
Cook safely. Follow the food safety guidance where you live, particularly for meat, fish, eggs, and preserving and canning.
Foraging, mushrooms and wild food. Never eat anything wild on the strength of a description or a photograph — in an article of ours or anywhere else. Many edible species have dangerous look-alikes, and identification is a skill learned in person from someone qualified. Nothing we publish is a field guide, and you should treat it as writing about foraging rather than instruction in it. The same applies to home curing, fermenting and preserving, where the risks are not visible.
Nutrition figures are estimates, calculated from typical values rather than measured from your ingredients. Do not rely on them for medical or dietary decisions.
Nothing here is medical, dietary or professional advice. If you need that, ask someone qualified.

#12. Availability and liability

We work to keep the site up and accurate, but we do not promise that it will always be available, that it will be free of errors, or that a particular article will stay where it is. We may change or withdraw parts of the site.

What we never limit. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not permit us to exclude. If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, nothing here takes away rights you have by law.

What we are not responsible for. What you choose to cook and how you cook it — see section 11. What other people post. Other companies' websites you reach from here. And indirect or knock-on losses of any kind, including lost profit, lost data or lost goodwill.

Everything else. Where we are liable and the law allows a limit, our total liability to you is limited to US$100.

This site is free. You pay us nothing, so the usual formula — capping liability at what you paid — would come to zero, and a limit of nothing is not really a limit. We would rather state a real figure.

#13. Changes, and if you joined before these terms

We may change these terms. If a change matters to you we will tell you — by email or a notice on the site — before it takes effect, and update the version number and date at the top. We keep previous versions published, so you can always see what changed.

One exception. The promise in section 1 — that reading stays free — is not one we can amend away. Changing that would not be a new version of these terms. It would be breaking them.

If you do not accept a change, you can stop using the site and close your account.

If you write for us. Work we have already published stays under the terms that were in force when you submitted it. Changing these terms does not change the arrangement on anything already in the archive. New work needs the current version.

If you joined before today, you signed up under something different, or under nothing at all:

If you created an account before we moved off our old site, you agreed to the terms and conditions that were on it. These replace them.
If you created an account after that move, there were no terms in force. These are the first that apply to you.
If your account came across from the old site, you agreed to that site's terms when you joined, and these replace them too.

Whichever applies, these terms now apply to your use of the site — reading, saving, commenting, all of it. We will ask you to accept them, because we would rather you had seen them, and we keep a record of who has and which version they saw. We will not shut you out of your account if you do not — this is a free publication and you are welcome to keep reading. Using the site is what these terms attach to, either way.

#14. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the State of New Hampshire in the United States, and a dispute about them goes to the state or federal courts sitting in New Hampshire.

Two exceptions, and for most people they matter more than the rule:

If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, you keep the protections of the law where you live, and you can bring a claim in your local courts. Nothing above changes that.
If you are in California, your rights under California privacy law apply whatever this section says.

There is no arbitration clause here, and no class-action waiver. We thought about it and decided against. This is a free site, we take no money from readers, and if someone has a grievance we would rather it went to a court they can walk into than into a private process they have to pay to enter.

#15. A few last things

If part of this cannot stand. If a court decides one part of these terms cannot stand, the rest of them still do. Take out the sentence; keep the document.

If the site changes hands. This site may one day have a different owner. If it does, these terms go with it — including the promise in section 1 that reading stays free — and bind them the way they bind us.

How we reach you. Email is how we send you anything these terms require us to send, and by keeping an account you accept that.

What belongs to whom. The writing belongs to the writers. The Cook's Cook name, the look of the site, and the way it is all put together belong to us.

#16. Contact

Email: info@thecookscook.com Post: The Cook's Cook LLC, 19 Gill Street, Exeter, New Hampshire 03833, United States Telephone: +1 603 580 5938

For authorities and regulators, including under the EU Digital Services Act, the same addresses reach us.