Best First Cookbook

[JoNorvelleWalker]

10 minutes ago, gfweb said:

Was Jello involved?

 

Never.

 

Green pasta sauce comes to mind.  And in those days lard was twenty five cents a pound.

 

[gfweb]

14 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Never.

 

Green pasta sauce comes to mind.  And in those days lard was twenty five cents a pound.

 

 

Sounds like Seuss food

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

15 minutes ago, gfweb said:

 

Sounds like Seuss food

 

 

It was not always well received.  I recall an ultimatum about the food coloring.

 

[Norm Matthews]

Yes, with technology as it is now, you can get every recipe on line and Jaques Pepin is a great teacher.  My first cookbook was  The James Beard Cookbook in paperback. I used it until it started falling apart and then got another one in hard cover.  By the time I lost it in a house fire, it was out of print and there were no computers with online selling, so the next two were James Beard's American Cookery and Jaques Pepin's la Technique.  I think the early James Beard cookbook is somewhat dated now in that some of the peripheral information is no longer relevant.    

 

PS When my son left home and moved to Seattle in the '90's, I gave him How To Cook Everything, a Henkel chef and paring knife set and some measuring cups and spoons. 

Edited April 17, 2019 by Norm Matthews (log)

[slowshooter]

Best first cookbook? As much as I would like to drop off a thick tome of technique and recipes. I think the Sunset book (or something akin to it) would be best if a used copy could be found. It covered measures and recipes in a way that was easily understood.

For someone who has difficulty with turning on a stove or oven, and doesn't know a spatula from a spoon? There was book called The Complete Illustrated  Step by Step Guide to Cooking and it was very much a monkey see, monkey do, sort of international cookbook. It's about 30 years old, and can be found for a pittance. The recipes are about what you would expect, very simple, with a few needed chef notes to goose the flavor. That said a complete tyro could make a dish from it without ending up in the hospital, or burning down the house. 

In the age of youtube and food television, seems that authors forget that not every budding cook is starting with a solid foundation in the kitchen. If there was a combination of the two books above with really great recipes, that'd be the single book I'd get.

I think my first cookbook was either a Betty Crocker book, or a section from Mary Margaret McBride's gigantic doorstop. Yikes, I'm old!

[kayb]

I find Shirley Corriher's Cookwise to be a good intro for people who know little about cooking. I've give that, as well as Bittman's HTCE, several times for wedding gifts when I knew people had an interest in cooking but little experience.

 

[Martin Fisher]

The best FIRST all-around cookbook!?

I'm going to go with "The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery: One of the World's Most Definitive Reference Books on Food and Cooking." ~1,300 pages.

[KennethT]

My first cookbook was used as the textbook in the professional cooking class for non-professionals that I took in college...  I don't know if it is still in print, but at the time, it was a great book that not only had good recipes to illustrate the theory that was taught, but had chapters on knife skills, sanitation, etc...  It was "On Cooking" by Labensky and Hause... I'd highly recommend it.