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With its silver gilding, stunning illustrations and scientific essays, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook amazes even the most accomplished chefs.

"It's a piece of art," proclaims Eric Ripert, executive chef of Le Bernardin.

But chef Heston Blumenthal's extravagant masterpiece is not so much about cooking - there are countless preparations but only 47 dishes in its 500-plus pages - as it is a backstage pass to his restaurant and the creative process behind his magnificent food. And it doesn't come cheap. The current list price is a breathtaking $275.

Mr. Blumenthal isn't alone. Over the past two months, fellow superstar chefs Ferran Adria, Gordon Ramsay, Grant Achatz, and Mr. Ripert have released volumes that transform the cookbook from the latest collection of recipes - as offered in seemingly never-ending new releases by TV celebrity chefs, including Mr. Ramsay - into an insider's look at the genius and hard labour that differentiate three-star chefs and their restaurants from naked chefs and domestic goddesses in their home kitchens.

Clearly these are not your average cookbooks. Not only are they priced at a premium compared with the typical culinary bestseller - Mr. Blumenthal's book aside, the four other volumes list anywhere from $47.95 for On the Line to $65 for Three-star Chef - they target an entirely different audience, mainly the passionate or the professional.

It should come as no surprise, given their pedigree: In a recent ranking of the world's 50 best restaurants, Mr. Adria's elBulli and Mr. Blumenthal's The Fat Duck took gold and silver respectively, while Mr. Ramsay's eponymous restaurant, Le Bernardin and Mr. Achatz's Alinea finished in the top 25.

These gastronomic heavyweights tend to create food that doesn't lend itself easily to the home kitchen, and these books reflect that, while catering to the modern penchant for behind-the-scenes voyeurism.

The public is "infatuated with creativity, innovation," Mr. Achatz says. "They want to go behind the curtain and see the magic, learn the trick. That's a very, very powerful, interesting thing."

Perhaps that's why only a sprinkling of about 30 recipes garnish A Day at elBulli, the bulky photo essay that chronicles, in five-minute intervals, a service at Mr. Adria's restaurant. Likewise, Three-star Chef by Gordon Ramsay and On the Line by Chef Ripert capture life at their restaurants before concluding with a collection of recipes.

"This book is a documentary on the life of Le Bernardin," Mr. Ripert says. "I didn't want to do another book of recipes ... and I thought the life of a restaurant ... can be inspirational for the public."

Chef-author Mr. Achatz rightly insists his book "focuses on recipes," but that doesn't mean he isn't pushing the culinary-lit envelope. "You make a book, you print a book, the book never changes, it never evolves ... whereas the philosophy of Alinea is constantly evolving change. That really bothered us."

So Mr. Achatz created alineamosaic.com, a companion website that encourages readers to collaborate with each other and offer feedback about the book.

Alan Zweig, marketing director for Ten Speed Canada, the distributor of the book Alinea, says that sales have been strong despite the perceived niche market for it. "People who attempt this at home, serious cooks, a lot of professional chefs, and cookbook collectors," he points out, have driven the book into its third printing.

According to BookNet Canada figures for the two-week period ending December 14, sales of Three-star Chef and A Day at elBulli have been even brisker than those for Alinea.

Cynics may argue that these books simply package a collection of unachievable recipes, and that consumers have no reason to buy into this type of brand extension, but both Mr. Ripert and Mr. Achatz deny that.

"I never thought like that," Mr. Ripert responds. "The idea was, we are creating a documentary on Le Bernardin, and it's going to be in the cooking section of the bookstore, but it's not a cookbook. I didn't have a business mind about the book."

Mr. Achatz contends that the real value of these books lies less in their recipes than in their deeper meaning: "You really will intimately understand cooking if you can digest philosophy and creative process and then make it your own. That's far more valuable than learning how to cook something en sous vide."