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What are those great cookbooks that you depend upon every day or that your parents and grand parents depended upon?

Are there some cookbooks that are historical in nature that you would like to add or are there cookbooks that are beautiful works of art in and of themselves. It would be nice to share these cookbooks and books with each other.

So this is a thread to discuss the world of cooking and those books which help to make good food possible. On our very own cookbook thread.

Bentley

I love reading cookbooks, I love everything about reading cookbooks. The pictures, to me the recipes themselves are like little short stories that require some imagination and visualization on the part of the reader. My favorite cookbooks tend to be those that offer a little history within the book itself. I have lots of favorites of many varieties. And for a little history with your cookbook, there is nothing like Southern food to get you there!

by Emeril Lagasse

by John Besh
My New Orleans will change the way you look at New Orleans cooking and the way you see World-famous chef John Besh. It's 16 chapters of culture, history, essay and insight, and pure goodness. Besh tells us the story of his New Orleans by the season and by the dish. Archival, four-color, location photography along with ingredient information make the Big Easy easy to tackle in home kitchens. Cooks will salivate over the 200 recipes that honor and celebrate everything New Orleans.
Bite by bite John Besh brings us New Orleans cooking like we've never tasted before. It's the perfect blend of contemporary French techniques with indigenous Southern Louisiana products and know-how. His amazing new offering is exclusively brought to fans and foodies everywhere by Andrews McMeel.

From Mardi Gras, to the shrimp season, to the urban garden, to gumbo weather, boucherie (the season of the pig), and everything tasty in between, Besh gives a sampling of New Orleans that will have us all craving for more.

The boy from the Bayou isn't just an acclaimed chef with an exceptional pallet. Besh is a chef with a heart. The ex-marine's passion for the Crescent City, its people, and its livelihood are main courses making him a leader of the city's culinary recovery and resilience after the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

There is no disputing Julia Child.
by Julia Child
In this magnificent new cookbook, illustrated with full color throughout, Julia Child give us her magnum opus the distillation of a lifetime of cooking. And she has an important message for Americans today. . .

to the health-conscious: make a habit of good home cooking so that you know you are working with the best and freshest ingredients and you can be in control of what goes into every dish
—to the new generation of cooks who have not grown up in the old traditions: learn the basics and understand what you are doing so cooking can be easier, faster, and more enjoyable
—to the more experienced cook: have fun improvising and creating your own versions of traditional dishes
and to all of us: above all, enjoy the pleasures of the table.

In this spirit, Julia has conceived her most creative and instructive cookbook, blending classic techniques with free-style American cooking and with added emphasis on lightness, freshness, and simpler preparations. Breaking with conventional organization, she structures the chapters (from Soups to Cakes & Cookies) around master recipes, giving all the reassuring details that she is so good at and grouping the recipes according to method; these are followed—in shorthand form—by innumerable variations that are easily made once the basics are understood.

For example, make her simple but impeccably prepared sauté of chicken, and before long you're easily whipping up Chicken with Mushrooms and Cream, Chicken Provençale, Chicken Pipérade, or Chicken Marengo. Or master her perfect broiled butterflied chicken, and next time DeviledRabbit or Split Cornish Game Hens Broiled with Cheese will be on your menu.

In all, there are more than 800 recipes, including the variations—from a treasure trove of poultry and fish recipes and a vast array of fresh vegetables prepared in new ways to bread doughs (that can be turned into pizzas and calzones and hamburger buns) and delicious indulgences, such as Caramel Apple Mountain or a Queen of Sheba Chocolate Almond Cake with Chocolate Leaves. And if you want to know how a finished dish should look or how to angle your knife or to fashion a pretty rosette on that cake, there are more than 600 color photographs to entice and instruct you along the way.

A one-of-a-kind, brilliant, and inspiring book from the incomparable Julia, which is bound to rekindle interest in the satisfactions of good home cooking.

and one of her other classics ~
Julia Child

That sounds like a great cookbook for me since I was able to sample some New Orleans food recently. Cookbooks exemplify much of the cultural nuances of a location.

Thank you for those adds.

Glad you find them useful. I will have more for this thread. :D

Julia Child is around in our house (cookbooks)...but we relied more on Fanny Farmer for the everyday cooking.

Marion Cunningham

Very reliable and you cannot go wrong.

Julia Child

Two of my favorites on Italian cooking:

Twelve: A Tuscan Cookbook by Tessa Kiros

A terrific book. The author traveled through Italy, basically looking into people's pots and asking for the recipes. Very down to earth and VERY GOOD COOKING!!!

Diary of a Tuscan Chef by Cesare Casella

More class than the first one, but still very family/tradition orientated, with lots of love and even more tomato sauce...
FANTASTIC cooking

Andre, those cookbooks look very good. Thank you very much for sharing them with all of us.

Sure, Bentley.
I looooove to cook, but I'm bad with cookbooks in the way that I often don't stick to the recipes and change things while cooking, a bit like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet show, humming, singing, tasting, opening a bottle of wine (or sherry for the sauce), add an eggplant there - what, the recipe did not include eggplant and capers - who cares, I think I like it...

Very funny - that sounds like my grandmother.

Bentley wrote: "Very funny - that sounds like my grandmother."

I take that as a compliment (smile)

Of course - she was the best cook I knew.

I love to cook and love to read cookbooks even if I don't use the recipes. My two favorites are old standbys:

byMildred Maddocks

by (Irma Rombauer)

You are pretty close Jill - good old college try.

by Irma S. Rombauer

Three parts for book citations: bookcover (you have it); author's photo (you have that too) ;but on the third part we had a problem - you need to add the author's name as linkable text (the link part of the author add).

Darn, Bentley........I have been doing well but goofed again. I apologize

This book has some original Jefferson and Jefferson family recipes, the rest are more modern incarnations of period recipes:

(no image) Thomas Jefferson's Cookbook by Marie Kimball

by Mary Randolph

Cookbook that first appeared in 1824 and written by Mrs. Mary Randolph, married to her cousin David Meade Randolph who was a Virginian landowner and farmer, and who was later designated Federal Marshall for Virginia through the influence of his cousin, Thomas Jefferson.

by Sharon Herbst (who is apparently not on ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ at all?).

Absolute must have for the kitchen!

Becky, the author is on goodreads but with her middle name. ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ sometimes needs to exact (smile).

by Sharon Tyler Herbst(no author's photo available)

Great add Becky and thank you.

Hi, I've had a couple of good recipes so far from by Matthew Scialabba and Melissa Pellegrino. They went around to farms in Northern Italy that take in paying guests and collected authentic recipes from them.

I highly recommend a (fairly) new book : Tea With Bea, from Bea's of Bloomsbury in London, England. FANTASTIC scones...I know because Ive been there to try them out for myself.

This cookbook has had some rave reviews; I may take a ride and get a copy.

by Gwyneth Paltrow

Synopsis:

Read the article in the Atlantic

Hello Sharon,

Scones are a favorite of mine.

But having said that, please make sure to follow our rules for citations.

The HBC citation rules state that you must add the book cover, the author's photo when available and always the author's link. We do have a thread called Mechanics of the Board which is in the Help Desk folder which may help you out a bit.

Here is how your citation should have looked:

by Bea Vo (no author's photo available)

Darrell wrote: "Hi, I've had a couple of good recipes so far from by Matthew Scialabba and [aut..."

That looks like a fab book Darrell; may pick that up at the same time.

Good job with the citation.

This cookbook is not for everyone!!!! Hilarious look at how to cook roadkill that you may find on the back roads of your state. Just remember, it has to be fresh!!!

The Original Road Kill Cookbook

by Buck Peterson (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Original Road Kill Cookbook is an outrageous, devastating response to the call of the open road. It is the ingenious solution sought by the free-spirited American who wants to participate in Mother Nature's bounty. It doesn't matter if you drive an off-road 4 x 4 or a delicate, aging Plymouth-Road Kill will help you by telling you where to find this highway supermarket, what to do while there, and how to fix your yellowline yummies.

I think I am going to get sick

Amazing, isn't it and it actually happens. I don't think I ever had the desire to gather up a deer that had been hit by a car and take it home to cook!!!!

Oh goodness - I just cannot imagine it and do not want to even try.

Jill wrote: "Amazing, isn't it!!!!"

Since tomatoes and carrots usually don't go out for walkies does everything need to be run over to end up in this book ... or does the writer accept you get your groceries the usual way? (smile)...

byJessica Theroux

A wonderful book. Nice recipes with a few pages of travel writing thrown in.

I wanted this thread to be appetizing not one for weight watchers who are trying not to eat because they all of a sudden feel sick.

´¡²Ô»å°ùé wrote: " byJessica Theroux

A wonderful book. Nice recipes with a few pages of travel writing thrown in."

Andre, now that is more like it.

I will redeem myself with a great cookbook recommendation. If you have ever been to Amish country, you know that their down home recipes are not to be missed. Easy to prepare and easier to eat.......great food.


Amish Friend's Cookbook

by Wanda E. Brunstetter

Synopsis:

New, from Barbour's best-selling author of fiction, Wanda E. Brunstetter, is the must-have cookbook of the season. Her Amish Friends Cookbook collection is a treasure trove of recipes and interesting facts from the heart of Amish country. With recipes divided into sections including breads and rolls, desserts, main dishes, sides, jams and jellies-and more!-you'll find only the best of home cooking between the pages of this delightful book. As an added bonus, you'll find featured facts about Amish life preceding each section of mouth-watering recipes. Topped off by one amazing package and an even more amazing price, cooks of all ages will have a hard time passing this one up!

You are going to have to add 100 great cookbooks to make up for that particular one which we will not mention.

The cookbook everybody is talking about right now.

Jerusalem: A Cookbook

by Yotam Ottolenghi

Synopsis:

A collection of 120 recipes exploring the flavors of Jerusalem from the New York Times bestselling author of Plenty, one of the most lauded cookbooks of 2011.

In Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi explore the vibrant cuisine of their home city—with its diverse Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities. Both men were born in Jerusalem in the same year—Tamimi on the Arab east side and Ottolenghi in the Jewish west. This stunning cookbook offers 120 recipes from their unique cross-cultural perspective, from inventive vegetable dishes to sweet, rich desserts. With five bustling restaurants in London and two stellar cookbooks, Ottolenghi is one of the most respected chefs in the world; in Jerusalem, he and Tamimi have collaborated to produce their most personal cookbook yet.

This is more about the chef rather than an actual cookbook, but arguably one of the premier chefs anywhere. His cooking is extraordinary, and like his good friend Julia Child, quite accessible to the everyday home cook. He turned down an opportunity to be The White House chef for the Kennedy administration to work at Howard Johnson. He eventually went onto open the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, and many more achievements to follow since then.

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen

by Jacques Pépin

Synopsis:

A wise and charming memoir from a man who quickly ascended the ranks of American cooks to become, according to Julia Child, "the best chef in America"

With sparkling wit, occasional humility, and a delightfully curated selection of recipes, Jacques Pépin tells the captivating story of his rise from a terrified thirteen-year-old toiling in an Old World French kitchen to an American superstar—he was one of the earliest pioneers of culinary television—who changed American tastes with his culinary wizardry and ad-libbed charm. The Apprentice begins in prewar France, with young Jacques cutting his teeth in his mother’s small restaurants. When he moves to Paris, we see tantalizing glimpses of Sartre and Genet, and in his role as Charles de Gaulle’s personal chef, Jacques witnesses history from a remarkable vantage point behind the swinging kitchen door. In America, he rejects an offer to be chef in the Kennedy White House, choosing instead to work at Howard Johnson’s, and then joins forces with fellow food lovers Julia Child, James Beard, and Craig Claiborne to make some history of his own. In the words of Anthony Bourdain, it's an instant classic.

I was afraid to look when I saw this come up on my list of having a new post since Jill's post awhile ago. This actually sounds quite good compared to that one.

Bentley, you know you secretly crave reading that cookbook that shall remain nameless!!!! :0)

Let me make one more try to redeem myself from causing you nausea.

Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking: A Mennonite Community Cookbook

by Mary E. Showalter

Synopsis:

Over 1,100 mouth-watering recipes are in this fabulous collection of favorites contributed by Mennonite families from all over the United States and Canada. All the recipes have been brought up-to-date for directions and measurements so whether it's oyster chowder or apple fritters, or the many main dishes and desserts that make Mennonite cooking so delicious, all of them can be enjoyed by the modern cook.

No, I have a delicate stomach and I cannot bear thinking about it so I cringe whenever there is another post here for fear???? - that you might have done it again.

I am so glad that you have turned over a new leaf.

New Orleans, has it all: - history, music, and great food.

Treme: The Cookbook: In The Kitchen with the Stars of the Award-Winning HBO Series

by Lolis Eric Elie (no photo)

Synopsis:

Inspired by David Simon's award-winning HBO series Treme, this celebration of the culinary spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans features recipes and tributes from the characters, real and fictional, who highlight the Crescent City's rich foodways. From chef Janette Desautel's own Crawfish Ravioli and LaDonna Batiste-Williams's Smothered Turnip Soup to the city's finest Sazerac, New Orleans' cuisine is a mélange of influences from Creole to Vietnamese, at once new and old, genteel and down-home, and, in the words of Toni Bernette, "seasoned with delicious nostalgia." As visually rich as the series itself, the book includes 100 heritage and contemporary recipes from the city's heralded restaurants such as Upperline, Bayona, Restaurant August, and Herbsaint, plus original recipes from renowned chefs Eric Ripert, David Chang, and other Treme guest stars. For the 6 million who come to New Orleans each year for its food and music, this is the ultimate homage to the traditions that make it one of the world's greatest cities.

Too tired to bother looking through the titles my mom has. But I will mention this one since I bought it for her for Christmas last year by Peter Kaminsky. My cousin was also going to get it for my grandma but she said don't bother. My mom loved it.

Almost every kitchen in the USA has this cookbook or an earlier edition. It is a classic!!

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

by Better Homes and Gardens (no photo)

Synopsis

-- 1,259 recipes that reflect current American eating habits.
-- More than 588 color photos, including step-by-step photos of intricate techniques.
-- Basics chapter includes ingredient identification, 14 menus, information on how to use the Food Guide Pyramid, low-fat cooking tips, table-setting information, and guide to cooking terms and techniques.
-- Color bars on every page match color-coded chapter tabs.
-- Every recipe has been tested in the Better Homes and Gardens "RM" Test Kitchen.

My two are already mentioned but I agree with Joy of Cooking and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

I think the next generation might answer:
How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Denise.....there are so many great cookbooks out there but some are classics aren't they?

Don't forget to use the book citations:

by Irma S. Rombauer
by Better Homes and Gardens (no photo)
by Mark Bittman

You can review the book citation guidelines at the following link:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2...

Thank you Jill for helping out Denise.

@Denise - you might want to give an edit to message 43 and try to add the citations. We are here to help and every attempt gets you closer to learning how it is done. We are very very patient and will assist you along the way. Nothing to be afraid of.

A la Mere de Famille, a renowned Parisian confectioner, has been in business since the 1700's! This is the first cookbook in its 250-year history. The book includes dozens of wonderful candy and cookie recipes, some easy and some more advanced. The book itself is a work of art. Printed on beautiful paper, it includes bits of the store's history, gorgeous photos and prints, and even copies of old receipts. The marzipan recipe was simple and simply delicious.

by Julien Merceron (no photo)

Thanks for tip, Carol. And glad you finally found the book to cite. Great job on the citation too.

My wife and I were going through my Father--in-laws home other week in preparation for selling it, and we found some old cook books including a 1943 edition of this classic

by Irma S. Rombauer

Synopsis:

It's been fascinating leafing through it. I don't recognize a few ingrediants (what exactly is rich milk) in some of the recipes and few of the recipes look down right nasty :)

there is actually a recipe for Canned French Fries (which she says is rather tasty, but lets say I'm a bit dubious)

Some observations

She uses paprika almost as a substitute for black pepper. Paprika is probably used in more that 50% of the entre recipes and when it is used black pepper is not.

when frying/sauteeing her oil of choice is bacon drippings, which I understand totally :)

Some of the recipes read almost like what you would find in your Grandmothers hand written family cook book
She also includes a recipe for the Japanese dish of Suki Yaki. I found that a touch suprising.

Odd about the paprika - my mother used a lot of paprika too.

I bet that cookbook was full of surprises. Great job with the format and citation.

I love Japanese food and this little cookbook provides recipes for everyday cooking.

Let's Cook Japanese Food: Everyday Recipes for Home Cooking

by Amy Kaneko(no photo)

Synopsis:

"Yum!" thought Amy Kaneko when she tasted the Japanese home cooking she'd married into. Even better, turned out it uses easy-to-find ingredients, and she couldn't believe how simple the techniques are for food this delicious. This terrific cookbook showcases 70 of Amy's favorite recipes, including Tonkatsu (crispy pork cutlets in a tangy sauce) and Onigiri (cute little rice balls stuffed with salmon). A glossary describes the more unusual ingredients and a source list makes it a snap to find and use Japanese specialties such as daikon, miso, and wasabi. It's tasty, it's practical, it's a wow with family and friends.