My wife and I both like to cook. I first purchased this book back when it was a white hardcover in the 1970's and repurchased the expanded edition with the cover shown in this ad in the mid 1980's. We have since given this cookbook as a gift to my mother in law for Christmas, and will purchase it again from Amazon for the first anniversary gift of my stepson and his wife.
This is the Encyclopedia of cookbooks. It has hundreds, perhaps over 1000 recipes (I've not even tried to count), but what makes it really good is its comprehensivness. It will take a meat like chicken, and tell you all about chicken, the different ways of cooking chicken, giving you tips. In the veggies section, you'll learn a bit about the history of each vegetable, and various ways of cooking them.
We have LOTS of other cookbooks. Our second most favorite cookbook is "The Joy of Cooking", but I assure you this one is better.
My wife, who is doing most of the cooking, almost always turns to this book if she needs to learn how to cook something new, or needs to refresh her memory, or needs to remember the estimated cooking times for turkey per pound, etc.
There is so much information in this tomb as to defy the imagination. Using just one example from how to boil an egg: this book tells you to avoid the green discoloration around the yolk--put the eggs in cold water, and start the boiling process with a cold start. When the water FIRST begins to boil, turn off the heat and let the eggs cook for varying periods of time (depending on whether you want truly hard boiled eggs or are trying to achieve slightly runny yolks with firm whites, etc.)Finally when the stove timer goes off, you pour the remaining hot water out, and put cold water on the eggs, stopping the cooking process.
As a result your hard boiled eggs come out perfect each time with no green edge discoloration.
This is just ONE tip out of literally hundreds, if not thousands, in this book. This is NOT a book written in 14 point fonts. This book has multiple columns, a fairly small font, and is about three inches or more in thickness, so it truly is a mini encylopedia.
As I said, we've got LOTS of cookbooks. But we'd likely take this one, and "The Joy of Cooking", "Beard on Bread", "The Joy of Cheesecake", and could do just fine. These books are our ESSENTIALS: all the others are just kinda nice to have around.
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2001
- Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2019
- Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2007
Top reviews from other countries
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2016
Book is a fantastic resource of American and International foods - - something ...
- MoeReviewed in Canada on October 23, 2019
This gently used cookbook has been kept in great shape and my number one go to for any recipe.
