This is the first cookbook I ever bought. My mom had it too. It is a great book for the beginning cook - the recipes are solid. You can screw them up a bit and they still come out edible, lol.
Seconding Fannie Farmer! When I want to make some classic American dish I’ve rarely or never cooked, I look there for instructions.
Julia Child’s “The Way to Cook” is excellent for novices - it was given to me as a gift when I’d already developed my own techniques, so I haven’t personally used it much (nice scrapple and ratatouille recipes, though - I did learn from those). But for someone still developing their cooking style, I’d recommend it.
Also, for Asian food, you can’t beat “The Complete Asian Cookbook” by Charmaine Solomon. It’s an oldie but has held up extremely well over the years. Having spent most of my adult life in Asia, I can vouch for the authenticity of many of the recipes.
Just be careful of one thing, though: it’s Australian, and uses Aussie tablespoons, which are FOUR (not three) teaspoons. I actually have a 4-tsp measuring spoon that I use when I cook from it.
Definitely the “Art of French Cooking”. I’ve made almost every recipe with reasonable ingredients in that thing to teach myself how to cook. They are almost all good.
The others I like have mostly been mentioned. Larousse has its place. Anything by the great French cooks (Bocuse, Troisgros, Pepin, etc.) is excellent. The Cooks Illustrated “Best Recipe” Series is excellent, practical and cheaply available on used book store websites.
For the truly cooking-impaired, don’t forget The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken. While hardly “encyclopedic”, it does contain a lot of relatively quick and easy recipes, suitable for, e.g., confirmed old bachelors who otherwise couldn’t fry water.
We’re still using some recipes from the classic Settlement Cookbook
Our earliest edition in the house is from the 1940s, and my grandma drew on it heavily cooking for the family back in the 1920’s thru the 70’s. She was in Milwaukee during that time, where the Settlement movement was strong. The book had a strong jewish and eastern european leaning, and her husband was of those ethnicities.
It’s encyclopaedic mainly due to its overall description on how to run a kitchen, a shopping list, a food budget, and a household.
I’ve been cooking from this book for years and years. It’s fantastic and very down to earth.
Another I would recommend is the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook.
I actually own three: the 1950 edition, the 1974 edition, and the 1988 edition.