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Friday Food and Drink Post: Before There Was AllRecipes, There Were Cookbooks!
And I’m a sucker for cookbooks. My favorites are the ones with personal touches, personal stories, and family recipes. In all of those veins, some of my “go-to” volumes are Nigella, Jennifer Brennan, Jamie Oliver, M.F.K Fisher, and Julia Child. In addition, when I’m visiting foreign climes, and if at all possible, I like to bring a local cookbook home with me. Here’s my rack. (Men of Ricochet, those of you whose minds live in the gutter, rise above!) Click to embiggen if you would like to read the spines. It’s the result of over half-a-century of collecting, and of occasional heartrending refinement, because I only have so much room:
Do you have favorite chefs? Favorite cookbook authors? Favorite sorts of cookbooks? Favorite food themes? Please share. (Room, schmoom. Convince me, and I’ll find a spot for it.)
P.S. Um, yes, @phcheese, that is an actual Isaly’s skyscraper ice cream scoop up top there on the left.
Published in General
I helped get my friend and step-father’s book Beer, Man Food, Man Cooking, and Beer: Recipes With Beer and Beer Trivia For All Occasions together (I just chose fonts really).
You know what’d be cool is if you could rent a kitchen school for a day and have a potluck party for people who come together from different states.
That would be cool! These days, it would have to be an enormous kitchen, so we could maintain “social distance.” Perhaps one day, we won’t have to worry about that again. Let’s hope.
Maybe there should be a Recipes Group here on Ricochet where you cooks can exchange your favorites. Then print up a book of them for sale to the members and all their friends.
I don’t have many cookbooks, but I do have my mother’s 1962 edition of Joy of Cooking. That one is fun to just read the commentary, aside from the recipes. When my sister and I cleaned out the parents’ house after my mother died, I got her copy of Larousse Gastronomique. Quite an interesting volume to just sit down with and open to any old page. And when Ray and I got married in 2003, we ended up with two copies of the Seattle Classic Cookbook, by the Junior League of Seattle. That’s where Ray got our chili recipe (Dog’s Breath Chili). We make it at least twice a year. Since we are both home-he working, me on furlough for at least one more week-we may make a batch this weekend.
Is “dog’s breath” the aroma that’s given off while it’s cooking, or what people think of you after you’ve eaten some? Either way, I bet it’s good.
I know there’s a keto recipe group here so I am sure there are others.
I believe it is called “You Will Need.”
Not a cookbook, exactly, but The Gallery of Regrettable Food by our own @jameslileks would make a hilarious addition to any cookbook shelf.
(I have never laughed so hard reading a book. Like, aching-sides-can’t-breathe-tears-streaming laughter. He referred to some kind of weird loaf-shaped dish as “a core sample from a mass grave” 😂😂😂.)
Oh, I looked at a sample on Amazon. That’s wonderful!
Better Homes and Gardens is still my go-to, although I’ve enjoyed a cookbook or two for single or two portion meals. I moved away from those as I got into the habit of preparing larger batches and portioning them out, so slow-cooker books joined my small shelf of cookbooks.
BH&G, some recipes torn out of magazines over the decades, and a set of recipe cards copied or photographed in my mother’s kitchen.
One last cookbook. As you can see by the price ($1.95) and its dilapidated condition, it has been well-used over the years. I learned how to make foolproof soufflés from Mr. Claiborne.
This reminded me of a cookbook I gave, a very long time ago, to a young friend of mine who was fretting about her lack of cooking skills, and whether she’d be able to satisfactorily feed her “guy” going forward. I couldn’t remember the name of it, or who wrote it, so I did some digging around. It was this one, but a different edition, so I didn’t recognize the cover! I had found it in a bookstore around the time that she was telling me of her worries, and thought it looked very useful.
Well, it was. And along with very practical, readable instructions, it also had his comments and firm opinions such as – NEVER put pickles in chicken salad.
Here’s my rack, so to speak.
Bravo! Some lovely ones there. I love Persian food. Also, Madhur Jaffrey–best naan bread recipe ever, IMHO. I also have a cookbook dedicated to ginger, which I think can be added to anything to make it edible.
My Mom had a beat up copy of this cookbook which used a lot.
I picked up a copy of this book years before I had ever heard of James Lileks. My son and I sat on the couch and laughed until we cried as we paged through it. Of course, I’m practically from the same neck of the woods as James, so some of his regional comments particularly resonated.
Since then, I’ve made a habit of picking up old cookbooks and advertising cook booklets, just to look at the pictures and marvel at what used to be considered good eating. I’d never cook much of it, but it makes for interesting and enjoyable reading.
I have a copy of How To Cook Everything and when my dad saw it – among my shelves of other cookbooks – all he could say was “I guess if you have that one you wouldn’t need any of the others.”
@rightangles. Is that Betty Crocker cookbook a little oversized – like binder sized, rather than book sized? My mother had one like that. When I was a girl I perused it looking for inspiration. I remember trying to make candied violets from that book. I so wanted to keep that book, but when I cleaned out my mother’s house it was gone.
What a treasure! I am jealous!
Yes, it is. My mother had one. My youngest sister got it. But about 10-15 years ago, they re-issued it – identically – same size, same pictures, same recipes. So that is where I go mine.
My ” old standards” cookbook is Pillsbury, and is a three-ring binder. The recipes aren’t fancy, but I’ve found them reliable, and it has two, one for a sour-cream cheesecake, and the other for lemon bars, that I absolutely love. So many of the pages are stuck together that a few years ago, I saw a new edition, and bought it. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that it didn’t have my lemon bar recipe in it! And there were a few other differences too. It wasn’t exactly “woke,” but it was distressingly modern. Fortunately, I hadn’t thrown the old one away, so I restored it to the shelf, and gave the new one to the Goodwill.
That’s the peril of new editions. I understand that the new edition of The Joy of Cooking has eliminated the recipe for roast possum. I’m keeping my old one.