Your Homeliest Cookbook

[maggiethecat]

I decided to check out my cookbooks to find something blush-making to report on the Most Embarrassing Cookbook topic. To my surprise, I couldn't find anything truly squirm-inducing (We sold a bunch of books to Half Price Books before Christmas, and did some strict winnowing.)

But boy, did I find some ugly books -- and I'm not referring to their design, but to their condition after spending twenty-five years in my kitchen. Below are but two of my victims; one cover between two books (the back of Vol. II. )It would be kinder just to shoot them, and replace, but the pages are still stuck together at Paris-Brest. It was the first dessert I made my mother-in-law.

Do you own cookbooks that should be slouching towards the knacker's yard? I'd love to see your pictures and hear your stories.

[helenjp]

I think I'm too embarrassed to show it, but mine is probably Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book, in the Penguin paperback edition (well, "paperback" is still half-accurate, but the front is long gone...). Dogeared, stained, I'm sure you can all imagine what it looks like.

Why did I turn to this book so often? I use it much less now, because the vegetables are western ones, and the style of cooking doesn't match our "has to go well with rice" style of eating.

It's a very eclectic book, so you don't feel that you've mined everything after you make two recipes from it, and of course, it's great bathtime reading!

[Richard Kilgore]

Mine is Richard Olney's "Simple French Food". I prudently got a backup copy next year for the day it falls apart in my hand.

[maggiethecat]

I think I'm too embarrassed to show it, but mine is probably Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book, in the Penguin paperback edition

←

Funny you should bring up my adored Jane Grigson, Helen. Her "Food With the Famous" has no back cover and a few pages missing. I love that book. (The "Vegetable Book" is still in decent though splattered condition.)

[C. sapidus]

Two of my oldest cookbooks, surprisingly clean after 20 years: The Art of Mexican Cooking (appropriately chile-stained) and a special two-volume paperback version of Joy of Cooking.

[snowangel]

Two of my oldest cookbooks, surprisingly clean after 20 years: The Art of Mexican Cooking (appropriately chile-stained) and a special two-volume paperback version of Joy of Cooking.

←

We have the the same two volume paperback version of Joy up at the cabin, and yes, duct tape does a nice job of holding the various parts of the book together. What makes the book so enchaninting is the various little slips of peper here and there -- all VERY old grocery receipts that mark the tried and true in a rural location.

The other candidate in my kitchen is Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cooking. The dustjacket -- long gone. The spine, well, it's teetering. Stained and splashed with soy sauce, sesame oil, oh yes. Doesn't matter that some of the pages are stuck together because I long ago memorized the basics.

[maggiethecat]

Two of my oldest cookbooks, surprisingly clean after 20 years: The Art of Mexican Cooking (appropriately chile-stained) and a special two-volume paperback version of Joy of Cooking.

Yeah, I had "Joy" in paperback for years and realized that I might as well use it as a disintegrating doorstop, so mangled and messed up it was. Got the hardcover 15 years ago, and it's intact, but filthy. You can only turn to the biscuit and popover recipes so many times before the book solidifies.

[mizducky]

I can see my 1975 hardcover Joy from where I am sitting. Its cover is filty, and there's a two-inch tear in the seam between spine and back cover. The cover of my paperback copy of Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking is deceptively clean-looking, due to the thin plastic laminate on the cover stock ... but that laminate is peeling back like cellophane all along the cover's edges. And a few hunks of pages have come completely unanchored from the spine. Those two are the most battered cookbooks in my collection, by far and away.

[Tri2Cook]

It's actually not all that bad for a book from 1936 that appears to have seen a lot of use but it's the worst I have. It has the original owners* names handwritten inside: "Ressupe book: Alain McSwain and Mae Bell McSwain" and a clipping from an old Tractor Farming magazine with a couple recipes (stuffed green peppers and Mrs. Gilmore's Lemon Custard Pudding)and an add introducing the new International Harvester Farmall Cub which "will replace 2 or 3 horses or mules". There's no date on the clipping but that tractor was introduced in 1947 (I was curious so I looked it up).

*I know this because the lady that gave me the book said it belonged to her mom, Mae Bell McSwain.

[nakji]

My mum's copy of the Purity Cookbook - it doesn't even have a cover anymore, but the spine is saved by the fact that it's spiral bound. All of the pages have odd notations and additional recipes stapled in. For years it was her go-to book for simple recipes, like pancakes, dill pickles, bread, etc. I read through it for a laugh over Christmas, but I found some recipes that I'll be able to make in Japan - squash and bacon croquettes, anyone?

[lgault]

I don't have a picture for proof but my worst looking, best-loved cookbook would have to be Bayou Cuisine. I think the Indianola, Mississippi Episcopal Church put it out in the 70's. It talks about the Spanish and French influence on the Mississippi Delta and has great recipes. My pages are stuck together on the "Oysters Johnny Reb." A recipe that's been at my family's holiday table since I can remember.

[chromedome]

My paperback copy of "Joy" is holding up pretty well, except for Volume 2 breaking in half. My daughter's got that, for the time being. It's the same 70's edition, but I bought it in pristine condition from a used book store in Chilliwack in '93.

My most battered, bedraggled cookbook is my grandmother's wartime "Victory Binding" of the American Woman's Cookbook, a vintage competitor to "Joy." It has a special section at the back of work-around wartime recipes, cognizant of rationing and shortages. My mother has a more modern edition from the mid-50's, which was the first cookbook I remember ever reading or using.

I got my grandmother's copy about ten years ago. It's falling to bits, holding itself together from sheer bloody-mindedness. Several pages have decades-old recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines, others conceal handwritten recipes. Lots of them have annotations and corrections in my grandmother's hand.

I was looking at it earlier today, with mixed feelings. After caring for her for nearly 20 years, my parents finally had to place my grandmother in a home, two days ago. Her Alzheimer's had progressed to a point requiring round-the-clock supervision, and they simply were unable to keep up. She is 93.

[mizducky]

For some reason my brain interpreted the question as applying only to cookbooks I alone had a hand in beating up. If you're also talking cookbooks that already had a lot of mileage on them before they arrived in my bookcase, my prize is my mom's copy of one "Jewish Cookery," © 1949, 4th printing 1951. Its cheap cloth binding has got that brittleness and patina an book only gets from time; the pages are all golden-yellowed and exude that wonderful aging-paper odor. But it's amazingly free of food stains; I think my mom didn't actually consult it very often.

Back to books I personally mauled--now that I look closer, my copies of the original Moosewood and Vegetarian Epicure are pretty disreputable-looking too. Relics of my granola-head youth.

[Tri2Cook]

For some reason my brain interpreted the question as applying only to cookbooks I alone had a hand in beating up.

←

If you're right about that then I can't play in this thread. None of my books that were new when I got them are beat up. Not even books that I've had for 20 years and used a lot. There may be a few small smudges in some of them but not many and most of those came from loaning books to others. Yes, I get called a picky b*st*rd all the time. I'm fine with that.

[maggiethecat]

For some reason my brain interpreted the question as applying only to cookbooks I alone had a hand in beating up.

←

Yes, MizD, that was my intention. If I added my collection of , er, vintage pre-owned books, it would get a lot uglier around here.

[Pierogi]

Welllllllll, if'ns we're gunna play by the rules, then I can really only 'fess up to trashing one, that'd by my Paul Prudhomme "Louisianna Kitchen". This is the page for the Chicken & Andouille Sausage Gumbo. I think it was either stock or roux that made the big splooosh on the page. The dustcover is long since shredded, the spine is trashed, it's well loved.

However, I'm claiming hereditary rights here, and offering up two of my Mom's very well loved and used cookbooks, that are now mine. I figure they sorta count, since a) I know who did the damage, b), there is direct genetic linkage between the damage-or and the current owner, and c) one of them I actually still use and have contributed to abusing. That'd be this one:

And Momma virtually taught herself to cook from this one, which is why I love it so....

That'd be the 1951 edition. I think the Polish cookbook has a publication date of 1948. Published by the Polonie Club of America, ya gotta love it.

[maggiethecat]

Pierogi, I love all of them. And I love that there's some kind of gastronomic DNA in your books.

Duct tape, is it? Brilliant.

[maggiethecat]

Yikes, I just found this bella -- Marcella's first book. In my twenties and thirties I was teaching myself to cook, it seems.

[Pierogi]

In my twenties and thirties I was teaching myself to cook, it seems.

Weren't we all??

[weinoo]

Here's my 30 year-old copy of Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking...still has both covers, but they're barely hanging on, and every time I take this book out of the bookcase, it sheds dried paper and glue...

[amdellutri]

The most beat up cookbook is Betty Crocker's Cookbook from 1970's when I was married and trying every recipe in the book.

[JeanneCake]

My most beat up cookbook is Maida Heatter's Book of Great American Desserts. There are three clumps of pages broken completely free from the binding, the paper dust cover has been lost to time and all my recipe notes and adjustments duly noted along with the vanilla stains. I used to keep an elastic (rubber) band around it but now I just let it rest in peace.

I had to buy a second copy of it years ago. I'm even considering buying a third just in case.

I've also gone through two copies of the Silver Palate books (the original two); and The Cake Bible. As for the savoury side... I have a few Pierre Franey books that have seen better days, as well as my Aida Boni Italian cookbook.

[maggiethecat]

My mum's copy of the Purity Cookbook - it doesn't even have a cover anymore, but the spine is saved by the fact that it's spiral bound. All of the pages have odd notations and additional recipes stapled in. For years it was her go-to book for simple recipes, like pancakes, dill pickles, bread, etc. I read through it for a laugh over Christmas, but I found some recipes that I'll be able to make in Japan - squash and bacon croquettes, anyone?

←

Snap! In Ottawa my mother's copy of "Purity" is sitting in the cookbook bookcase in exactly thesame condition you describe yours. I'm wondering how many Canadian Society me mbers have their mother's or grandmother's workhorse copy of "Purity." (The name referred to a brand of flour, I believe, not the nominal chastity of its owners.)

[dockhl]

I'll play !

My own worst are the first Vegetarian Epicure (1972) and the original Silver Palate cookbook (1982). How I loved those cookbooks I bought the 25th Anniversary Silver Palate to give to my daughter (23). It is so peculiar....color photos? Wassup with that?

(BTW, you can get a used copy of Vegetarian Epicure on Amazon for 35 CENTS !!! Prolly looks like mine )

The other is a copy of the Betty Crocker cookbook (1951) that was my grandmother's. She gave it to me when I first married in 1971...and it was pristine !!! Says a lot about G'ma's cooking. (frozen pies...) The Christmas cookie section is a stuck together mess. All of our favorites are in there. Some day I'll give it to my daughter and she'll know just by where it falls open where to start.

[Jennifer Brizzi]

I'm loving this thread, as many, many of my many cookbooks look like the ones pictured. (Love that duct tape--will have to try it!) I love spattered, worn cookbooks, well-loved as the Velveteen rabbit, and my problem is that when I replace a worn-out cookbook, I can't bring myself to toss the old one. So I have two copies each of Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook, Fannie Farmer (actually four if you count different year's editions), Moosewood and Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and Jessica Harris's Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking.

The prize for homeliest, however, goes to my James Beard's American Cookery (LB 1972)--a delightfully opinionated, encyclopedic, divine classic. If you find any in good condition, buy two and send me one of them. My mother once cooked from it, until I stole it, and I don't cook from it much but use it for research constantly, so that it has lost is spine and threatens to dissolve any minute.