Cookbooks that every home cook should own

My favorite, Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking. Learn to make your own pasta, Bolognese sauce, lasagne alla Bolognese, her famous tomato-butter-onion sauce, her lemon chicken, and on and on.

It’s, it’s a...cookbook!

I liked the A&E series of "Nero Wolfe" and I remember one episode where it shows a bookshelf in Fritz's kitchen and there was a copy of Joy of Cooking which made me laugh. I guess the props person needed some books for the shot but didn't think about Fritz's status as a "chef" of the old school.

How to Cook Everything has a lot of instructions and solid recipes.

Bill Neal's "Southern Cooking" and/or "Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie." Classy books, bulletproof recipes tested in a home kitchen.

All books by Jane and Michael Stern. They made me enjoy reading cookbooks.

[italic]Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961, Vol.1, 1970, Vol.2)[/italic] by Julia Child

[italic]The New Basics[/italic] by Sheila Lukins and Julie Rosso

Lol, R2. Not many will get that.

[quote] Lol, R2. Not many will get that.

I’m sure quite a few will. It’s become a DL meme over the years.

Quick and Easy Dump Cakes

Quick and Easy Dump Dinners

Charleston Receipts

I still have nightmares about Cathy's fat fingers and long talon nails touching those apple turnovers made from pie filling and white bread. Yuck!

Nice, R13. That one is more art than cookbook, but I have that on my shelf of gay cooks, along with James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Bill Neal, and James Olney.

The Fannie Farmer cookbook. It was good enough for your grandmother, so it ought to be good enough for the likes of you!

R14 Richard Olney?

r9, I have no idea what r2 means.

The Silver Palate Cookbook - there’s not a single dude in this amazing gastronomic reference book.

I enjoy browsing through cook books for ideas, but I find online recipes more convenient. I remember how my dear old Mater used to prop the cookbook up on the counter while she worked. Alas.

Anything by James Beard, but especially [italic]James Beard's American Cookery[/italic] and [italic]James Beard's Theory & Practice of Good Cooking[/italic].

How to Boil Water

Kathy Mitchell has no warmth in her personality. She bulldozes through those “recipes” at lightning speed. Ron Popeil also seemed like a snake oil salesman, but I had to laugh when he’d spray paint his bald spot (another one of his products) before demonstrating his rotisserie.

Yeah, that Olney, R16. He is my least favorite I guess.

r16 It's an allusion to a famous "Twilight Zone" episode.

r16

OP, do you really cook any recipes from "Joy of Cooking"? I forgot what I made from there, but the quantities were ridiculous, like 1/4 tsp. of garlic. I'm exaggerating, but that's what I remembered.

The Olney book I have is his autobiography, and it is pretty much him talking about "Jimmy" Baldwin for 50 pages and then bragging about his sensational cellar for the next 250.

No but it was the first cookbook I read at 12. I learned proper technique from it @R25 Also A nice introduction to dishes

For R24

I have tons of cookbooks but find I use this one the most. Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

Fanie Farrmer. All books since are just spins

Bump

Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish

R9 You and R2 must have a thing going on. I never heard or saw this 'meme' of which you write. I thought R2 was a clever answer, nothing more.

I tend to agree with R33. It is a meme, but is it a DL meme??

[quote] It is a meme, but is it a DL meme??

I never heard of it before today. I had to google it. I vote "meme." Some of you are true obscurantists.

The Settlement Cookbook, 28th edition, published 1947

Subtitled "The Way to a Man's Heart"

"Compiled by Mrs. Simon Kander - tested recipes from Milwaukee Public School Kitchens, The Girls Trades and Technical High School, Authoritative Dieticians, and Experienced Housewives."

My two favorite cookbook titles are:

"First You Take a Leek ... "

and

"You've Had Worse Things In Your Mouth."

I'm bumping this thread because I seek your counsel, DL. I've been collecting cookbooks for years now: basics like Julia Child and JOY OF COOKING all the way to MK Fisher's writings and specialty books on Indian and Vietnamese cooking.

A few remain close to my heart, but the truth is 1) my diet has become restricted over time, so I never eat a lot of this food and 2) I almost never consult my books when I do cook. Like many, I'm more likely to consult an online source for a recipe on my phone or laptop. So I'm trying to declutter.

I have about 25-35 books to find a home for. Should I just donate them to Goodwill? A library? Try and sell them online? Most are in good condition and some were quite expensive/hard to find originally.

Darina Allen's "Forgotten skills of cooking"

The Chubby Queen's Guide to Southern Cooking by Miss Lindsey Graham. Featuring recipes to win over any gentleman caller!

"Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-based Recipes" by Paul "Fotie" Photenhauer

"The Testicle Cookbook: Cooking with Balls" by Ljubomir R. Erovic

R38 you might try selling your cookbooks by mail to Powell’s Bookstore in Portland Oregon.

R38, My Library has a 'Friends of the Public Library' that maintains a used gift shop of donated books. It's my favorite place to donate books and recordings that I no longer expect to use. Your library may have a similar place to will accept and re-sell used books.

I can recommend any cookbooks from Edna Lewis, especially The Taste of Country Cooking and In Pursuit of Flavor. The recipes are simple and clear and focus on American cooking from the South, but without all the heavy embellishments of later cooking writers. I actually do cook from this cookbook (I like the Silver Palate recommendation, too).

I like HOME COOKING: A WRITER IN THE KITCHEN. The recipes are good.

Author Laurie Colwin used to writer essays for Gourmet magazine. Then she died.

[quote]From the humble hotplate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Hilarious, personal, and full of Colwin’s hard-won expertise, Home Cooking will speak to the heart of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover.

[quote]“Celebrates a life devoted to food, with chapters on how to cook a meal for several hundred people, how to prepare a gourmet dinner with eggplant in your bathtub, and how to make the best fried chicken in the world.”

This one.

I have it. I really enjoyed it because there’s stories and pictures that go with every recipe. There’s a sequel I’ve never seen about cooking casseroles and desserts such for church functions, they’re for serving at large meals.

Here’s the sequel.

From the editors of Cooks Illustrated - “The Best Recipe”

R16/R33/R34/R35, I cannot imagine from under what rock you emerged that you wouldn't know that particular meme. Having made its debut nearly 60 years ago, it's now famous, and widespread across Western culture.

There's no 'chic' to be gained, even as a troll,* by disparaging it or those familiar with it as 'obscurantist,' or professing not to know it. It's the kind of thing which, if somehow one truly was unfamiliar with it, one ought to find out what it is and not brag about one's ignorance.

*The IMDb religion board was once trolled by a New Zealander in her middle sixties, apparently in some kind of competition to make herself infamous as the most awful woman on Earth. Part of her affectation was to disparage the original 'Star Trek' as something she'd never watched, an insignificant, shitty American series which influenced nothing and was remembered and watched by no one. Plumbing her posting history, however, revealed that she'd not only seen it, but remembered it fondly and enthusiastically, depending on who she was talking to.

Trolls lie online for all sorts of reasons known only to themselves.

[quote][R16]/[R33]/[R34]/[R35], I cannot imagine from under what rock you emerged that you wouldn't know that particular meme. Having made its debut nearly 60 years ago, it's now famous, and widespread across Western culture.

But, what is a “meme”?

Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni

A Kitchen In Corfu

Japanese Homestyle Cooking by Tokiko Suzuki

[glowering at R50]

Nigella Lawson's "How to Be a Domestic Goddess"

Desserts By Pierre Herme

"What's all this I hear about The Joys of Cocaine? Cocaine is a bad drug, don't ever try it! Ooh, that's very different. Never mind." Miss Emily L.

R38, if you’re open to sharing email (we could each create a new email account even), I would love to hear your titles and will buy some. If not, please let me know where you opt to sell so I can check them out there.

Thank you to whoever created this thread and R38 for reviving it.

Thai Food by David Thompson

R1 Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking always come to mind anytime cookbooks are discussed and it's the first to be mentioned here. I'd love to master Marcella's recipes.

The Moosecock

Beard's American Cookery and anything by Marcella Hasan, especially the "Essentials," as R1 said.

But for DLers I strongly suggest Henri de Toulouse-Latrec's and Maurice Joyant's "Art of Cuisine." A very serious gourmet and cook, Toulouse-Tatrec offers rich, sensible, careful and humorous recipes with very specific instructions on where to insert the peppercorns in your game birds.

And the Alive B. Toklas Cookbook is essential, too.

Plus anyone who likes New Orleans cookery needs a copy of the "Picayune Creole Cook Book." Any edition is fine - I mainly use the fifth. If you like Louisiana, Cajun, Creole or any of cuisines from down N.O. land, also consider Mary Land's "Louisiana Cookery" and the great Ladcadio Hearn's 1885 "La Cuisine Creole: A Collection of Culinary Recipes," an early collection he made while studying Creole culture and language. Brilliant. Reprints are fairly easy to find.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.

I recommend larks on toast.

The Escoffier Cookbook

Vignette Of Korean Cooking by Mrs. Jae-Ok Chang

It's ghetto but good, R66

Sorry meant to sign it R66 but I'm drinking.

Pei Mei's Cookbooks 1, 2 and 3

3 is the nicest. Fancy Chinese dinners per region

Mrs. Chiang's Szechuan cookbook.

BTW Marcella Hazan has several cookbooks, not just the Essential Italian Cookbook

Uses of Dirt

“Cooking with Feces”

Marcella Hazan is vastly overrated and "Essential Italian Cookbook" has unleashed up the world a bunch of "experts" on Italian food. The introductions to her recipes make pronouncements that start with "Italians..." or "Italians don't..." as if there were one Italy and one cuisine. I'm sure it was a revelation to people whose exposure to Italian food was "spaghetti and meatballs," but it was not to anyone with a knowledge of Italy. I believe she was responsible for "Italians never saute onions and garlic in the same dish," which is nonsensical. Her recipes are generally from Emilia-Romagna which has great food, and some are excellent but some are decidedly uninspired.

Moosewood Cookbook has solid vegetarian recipes, if a bit old school hippie dippy.

I have way too many cookbooks that I no longer open. I am making Grandma Clark's Irish Soda Bread tomorrow.

I don't think it's particularly Irish but it's tasty.

Anything by Ina Garten, especially if you are shaky. Exact recipes I think even she calls them foolproof.

R74 is a pompous idiot who doesn't know shit.

Hi, Lidia.

I know a fucklot more than you, asswipe. It's the pomposity of all those who worship at the altar of Hazan that I'm calling out. Many used to be worshippers of Julia Child (who is fine, but not a goddess).

And don't get me started on LIdia.

Anyone who has ever lived (and eaten) in the Deep South should own White Trash Cooking. Well worth it for the pictures alone, but the recipes are the real deal Sadly, the author died of AIDS in 1988.

I posted this way back, as post #4.

What happened to it, I don't know.

I really do not understand why this forum is so screwed up!

Here are my favorite cookbooks:

"The Harry's Bar Cookbook" by Arrigo Cipriani (Northern Italian cuisine)

"The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American" by Jeff Smith (American Cuisine)

"The New York Times Cookbook" by Craig Claiborne (General cookbook - USA)

"The Fanny Farmer Cookbook" by Marion Cunningham (Modern version, General cookbook - USA)

Another vote for Ina Garten's recipes. Her recipes are carefully tested. They are clearly written, never overly complicated, and they always work.

Her television work is an unbearable crap fest. But her published recipes are dependably solid.

If you are good enough in the kitchen that you're rolling your eyes at "Ina Garten," then you're skilled enough to select your own damned cookbooks.

The critics seem to like Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat" cookbook. I tried her recipe for ratatouille and it was quite good, although it is very similar to Elizabeth David's. Like her, I don't care for eggplant. Her most recent cookbook is also supposed to be quite good.

What about this list?

I love the Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian, Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, Pati’s Mexican Table and Martha Stewart Entertaining. I like Ina’s recipes but there isn’t one book of hers that I go to specifically.

Back in 1990 when I formally "left home", my mother bought me a copy of Delia Smith's "Cookery Course". I still have it, although it is much battered and stained. A lot of the recipes are now pretty dated, but it was the book which taught me *how* to cook well. Delia's recipes aren't exciting, but if you follow them, they just work. Since then, I've branched out into ever more extravagant and pretentious culinary creativity, but I've only been able to do that successfully by building on the foundation which that first book built.

I love the older editions of JOY, with the lines like “when the last princess slip was freshly beribboned, our Hungarian laundress would make us this special treat....” and of course the recipes for use in the case of a nuclear attack.

Moosewood---the current version has less butter and cream, so if you want decadence with your veggies, find an old copy on EBay. The stuffed zucchini is the perfect potluck dish--always gets eaten, no one else will bring it and its easy to make.

Nigella Lawson lives in my bookshelf. And my Bon Appetit yearbook is something I swear by for this awesome fried chicken recipe that requires you to marinate the chicken in hot sauce first. I also have a cookbook called [italic]Harlem Really Cooks[/italic] written by a black historian of Harlem shortly before she died. Not just traditional soul food recipes, but foods from West Indies, Latin America and Afric immigrants to the US. I like the smothered pork chops dish; the chops are dredged in pancake mix instead of white flour.

France by Fanny Craddock

I love all of the Two Fat Ladies cookbooks, based on their shows.

Any Jane Brody cookbook but especially Good Food. She was the NYT food editor for years. Delicious, easy, healthy, And I'm not a foodie.

My husband and I are both avid home cooks and own many cookbooks. Among those we come back to most often are: Joy of Cooking; How to Cook Everything and Kitchen Matrix by Mark Bittman; Jerusalem and Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi; Everyday Mexican by Rick Bayless; and, Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. We also cook a lot from Bon Appetit magazine, and I like a lot of the New York Times Cooking site recipes too.

That Zuni Roast Chicken recipe is ridiculous. Not the finished product itself, which is delicious. It's how he roasts the chicken...browning it, then roasting it. The only roast chicken recipe you'll ever need it from The Cordon Bleu At Home cookbook. Here's a link to the recipe which Brenda Food Blogger got wrong - the recipe in the book calls for a 3lb chicken. She also "pats" the chicken dry. I get a large muslin cloth out and make sure it's absolutely dry. She also neglects to mention to whisk the oil and butter that you coat the bird with. She get's the flipping part right, 20 mins on one side, 20 min on the other, the add a half-cup of water to the pan and flip the bird breast side up for 20 min. If you have a 4lb bird, do the same but at 25 min per side

You can do all that stuff with herbs under the skin if you're so moved, but the process is the same. No browning in a pan.

"Blending With Barbra."

The Brown Derby Cookbook is fantastic. Paper book version available on Amazon $18.95

R94 reminds me of the time I was trying some complicated recipe that involved browning the chicken before roasting it. I was high, and rolling around that whole chicken in a frying pan made me feel like I was cooking a BABY.

My baker’s dozen for European/American cooking and entertaining

James Beard’s “Theory and Practice of Good Cooking” & “American Cooking”

Julia’s “Mastering the Art . . .” (or her simpler “The Way to Cook”)

Elizabeth David’s “Italian Cooking” and/or Marcella’s “Essentials”

Edna Lewis “The Taste of Country Cooking” (and anything else she’s written)

Richard Olney’s “Lulu’s Provençal Cooking” (rare, EXCELLENT, partially redone as “Provence The Beautiful Cookbook”) + his single volume Time Life International Cookbook

Barbara Kafka’s “Food for Friends”

Lorenza de Medici’s “Italy The Beautiful Cookbook” (simple recipes, but only for impeccable ingredients)

Claiborne and Franey’s “The 60 Minute Gourmet”

Lee Bailey’s “Country Weekends”

The Joy of Cooking (earlier editions)

[quote] Delicious, easy, healthy

r92 I just saw the subtitle is "Living the High-Carbohydrate Way." Is that good?

Jane Brody is a horrible hack writer (and a thoroughly unpleasant human being). Yes, her food book preaches the benefits of high-carb, reduced -fat and -protein diets. She looks down on obese people and appears to have ended her education about nutrition, fitness, and the human body at some point in 1972.

The hag is 79 years old and has been writing the NYT "Personal Health" section forever. Why the Times keeps this dinosaur is utterly inexplicable to many people.

This baby s the best. 1949 Good Housekeeping cookbook. Some recipes are old-fashioned but not many. Really tells you how to cook anything, and it's easy to use. (American food.)

Zuni ?

The one and only mfk fisher. You can keep the rest.

I’m surprised the DL hasn’t discovered Alex Hitz yet. Not because the books are good but because he’s high camp.

At least one cooking textbook that culinary student would use.

What about a cookbook by N.Y. celebrity chef, Daniel Humm?

He is dating multi-billionaire widow Laurene Jobs, who is much older and, according to Humm, a terrible cook, although she was an early adapter of the Food Truck Phase.

Any more suggestions?

Moosecock

Good Housekeeping and Joy of Cooking are solid cookbooks and I cooked out of them when I was young in the 80s in addition to learning all the new fangled ways.