Before I moved I had two or three shelves of cookbooks. I thinned them out when I moved and still have a lot. But some I could not do without, If you like cookbooks, and could only have, say, ten, which would they be? I find it hard to choose myself, but here are some I like. And as soon as I post this I’m sure I’ll think of how it should be changed.
Beard on Bread My favorite thing to make is bread. There are wonderful bread baking books but IMNSHO this is the best of them all,
The Joy of Cooking My edition is only about twenty years old but the variety of recipes is fantastic.
The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook copyright 1950. This is the book my mom had while I was growing up, with the red cover and white viny covering.
German Baking Today This one is from the Oetker company, my folks got it for me while they were traveling in Europe.
Foods of the World It’s cheating to include a Time-Life series but this is my favorite all over cooking series
The Art of Greek Cookery This book originated with the ladies of a Greek Orthodox church in New York state.
Beard on Pasta Like #1, this book is my favorite in it’s subject.
Heartland Baking This is from a cafeteria in St, Joseph Missouri.
Kasson Cooking This is not one you would know, it’s one of those small family cookbooks. Kasson is the maiden name of my maternal grandmother and it’s the family line we have the oldest info on, the first Kasson coming to the colonies in 1722
The Household Searchlight Recipe Book This a cookbook published from 1931 to 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, which is my home. The fourteenth printing was the one my grandmother owned, the one mentioned just above. It was a practical, family oriented book. Had to be my very favorite, it had her handwriting in the endpapers. ( I’m a sentimental person.) My mother and sister and I collected all the printings of the book, all twenty seven, the reprints, the 1958 rolodex version, and the two printings of a household etiquette book the accompanied the recipe books. We have donated them to the major library cookbook collection of Kansas State University. which has about forty thousand volumes.
Though I cook a lot, I have very few cookbooks. I tend to ‘wing it’ for many things I cook, and these days, if I do want or need a specific recipe or cooking technique I will just google it.
But I do have a couple:
Historical / sentimental favorite:The Picayune Creole Cook Book, Thirteenth Edition, purchased in pristine condition at a garage sale. I don’t think my edition is worth much, but it’s a nice piece of cooking history.
Go-to favorite: an 80s-era version of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, gifted to me by my mom after I moved out. For many years, especially pre-internet, it was my bible for things like how to hard-boil an egg, or how much time per pound to cook a roast.
I have more cookbooks than I can count. The ones that get used most often are Joy of Cooking (1972 edition?), The Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, and a collection of church/Junior League/PTA cookbooks from all over the country.
We have many. Most I don’t even remember the names. The Joy Of Cooking, of course. A few I bought in Alaska featuring mostly seafood. A cookbook/memoir by Dom Deluise with some great Deluise family recipes.
The one that I cherish is from Chez Yvette, a restaurant serving mostly locals in the french quarter of St Martin. Yvette is gone, but her family still runs the place the way Yvette would want it. Her husband Felix still hangs out, shaking hands and sitting with customers to chat.
ETA: of course the best cookbook is my cookbook. Decades ago I bought an empty recipe book and I add great recipes when I encounter them.
When I moved, I had to give away countless books. I had over 100 cookbooks alone, from little pamphlets from the 40’s to coffee-table size tomes on ‘Exotic Ice Creams to Make At Home’. I put them on the FB free site and they were gone in an hour! I kept a handful, ‘Square Meals’ by Jane and Michael Stern. ‘The Complete Peg Bracken I-Hate-To-Cook’ book. And of course ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ and ‘Joy of Cooking’.
That reminded me of another favorite: Lowbush Moose by Gordon Nelson. The game recipes are adaptable to store-bought proteins if you don’t live in Alaska. He’s also funny as Hell.
I don’t have that many that I use on a reasonably regular basis:
The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
The King Biscuit Flour Hour - er, King Arthur Baking Company Baker’s Companion & Cookie Companion
(and yes, I am aware that the radio show spelled it “Flower Hour” and it had nothing to do with King Arthur Flour)
Other than that, my “cookbook” is, “Whatever shows up in an Internet search,” although I do tend to gravitate to Food Network recipes; for example, my current “go to” meatball recipe is by Rachael Ray.
You would think that one of the most popular cookbooks would be, “The one where I write down the family recipes” - but in my case, I don’t have a single recipe from any of my relatives. Want to know what my usual pasta sauce recipe is? Take a can (or two, if making lasagne) of canned tomato sauce, stir in some garlic powder and Italian spices, and heat.