When Do You Give Up On A Cookbook?

[Chris Amirault]

Over in the Cookbooks You Actually Use To Cook thread, Geoff Ruby asks,

And, on a completely different tangent: when do you give up on a cookbook?  I guess sometimes that happens before it enters your home - you look at it in the store or online or wherever and make up your mind - eh, this isn't for me. But what about the ones you do purchase or get as gifts - what makes you decide to sell, give away, bury, etc. a cookbook. I've found this very difficult, for some reason, even for cookbooks I'm fairly certain I'll never use (again).

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It is a different tangent, and a good one that deserves its own thread! I tend to relegate the obvious howlers to the Salvation Army (bad advice, etc.), and I am wary of books that use nice pix to try to blind you to bad recipes. But I tend to keep books that repeat dishes that I make a lot, figuring that more information is a good thing.

You? What makes you bail on a book?

[culinary bear]

The words "low fat" or "Ainsley Harriot" on the cover.

[Swisskaese]

The words "low fat" or "Ainsley Harriot" on the cover.

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My other half bought the same Ainsley Harriot book twice. We have yet to use either one. I will probably give one of them as a gift to someone who might appreciate them more than I do.

I don't buy a lot of cookbooks. I am very careful about researching which cookbook I want to buy.

I will buy anything with Paula Wolfert's name on it.

Edited January 3, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Anna N]

A number of things will come into play before I ditch a cookbook and will also influence how I ditch it:

Like culinary bear, if the title contains the words low-fat, healthy, slimming or anything similar I will offer it to a friend who likes that sort of thing.

If the cookbook is truly "bad" meaning it gives bad advice or the recipes obviously will not work, then I throw it into the garbage.

If a cookbook is the pre-cursor of another book that is almost identical (I HATE when publishers do that!) then I will usually pass on the older edition.

If the book is full of recipes calling for cans of this and packages of that then I donate it to charity.

I need to ditch a lot of cookbooks as well-meaning people keep giving me books on the assumption that any cookbook is worth having!

[amclaud]

My husband and I utilize bookstores for date nights/ cookbook research. We will each pick a pile to browse, grab a cup of coffee and hang out for hours...

If we find ourselves wanting to browse the same book more than 3 times, we deem it purchase-worthy, and will either buy it on the spot or look for a deal online. Too many books seem really appealing at first glance, only to proove mostly useless once you bring them home.

[Jean Blanchard]

I have many cookbooks that I don't use but just can't seem to make myself part with. I guess it's because I once gave away a cookbook that I went looking for a year later because I remembered ONE recipe that I liked. I've become much more discerning when I buy a cookbook in the last few years but I just bought Recipes by Susan Spungen and so far I'm unimpressed.

[BarbaraY]

A number of books that I have acquired have been disposed of by giving them to thrift stores. A book called "Forgotten Recipes" is one. There was a reason they were forgotten!

Microwave cookbooks are another that I dispose of.

I have some books that I find the recipes don't work but I keep them even though I don't use the recipes. For instance, one is a dessert book by a well known food writer. Every recipe I ever tried from it came out wrong but it gets rave revues on Amazon.com.

I like some of the ideas but I have to adapt them.

[BeeZee]

I've taken out several cookbooks from my local library to see if they had anything interesting. If I read thru the whole book and find several recipes that I want to try and there's good info. in it, I'll buy it. I'll usually get them online (overstocks, used, etc.). If there's only a couple of recipes of interest, I'll just copy those. Saves a ton of money vs. buying a book that looks good and finding out that it's really nothing special.

[Chris Amirault]

I have some books that I find the recipes don't work but I keep them even though I don't use the recipes. For instance, one is a dessert book by a well known food writer. Every recipe I ever tried from it came out wrong but it gets rave revues on Amazon.com.

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Inquiring minds want to know, BarbaraY! What is it?

[racheld]

I have recently ruthlessly pruned my roomful of cookbooks---mostly acquired just because they could be lumped under the category of "cookbook" and numbers somehow counted at the time.

I Goodwilled one Betty Crocker "cake" book which I remember receiving as a consolation prize after I wrote an irate letter to the company for printing their recipe for "Silver Cake" on about seventeen separate pages of the same book. They'd offer a new frosting, and then print the cake recipe again. They sent a letter of apology and another book when I castigated them for thinking their readers were either too stupid to notice the repetitions or not bright enough to return to page 7 if they were in need of a mouthful of styrofoam.

And my only regret in all the years of acquisition and sharing and losing and moving and leaving in great boxes in the garage---I too-generously and unthinkingly gifted my Sis's then-MIL, a home-ec teacher, with my copy of Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, worn leather binder, yellowing pages, a few former-owner-written-spidery-notes in the margins and end pages---circa 1860 or so.

I'd love to have it back, just for the OLDTH of it, the HAVING of it. But we had recently become "family" and she should like that sort of thing, etc.

And my favorite of all is not for recipes, not for pictures, not for any value other than that it was a gift from a realtor charged with selling the contents of a house we rented for a while when we were first married. The elderly owner had gone into a nursing home, leaving all her worldly goods in her little frame house (how I coveted those cut-glass sherbet dishes and that incongruous Murano chandelier). The real value in the book, a slim, spiral-bound little church-published item, lies in the lovely Spencerien script on the flyleaf:

Butter Scot Pie. Look on page where pie are.

[mizducky]

Right at this very moment, in my trash can, is a discarded cookbook. I had bought it some years ago, I think off a remainder/markdown table--big glossy coffee-table-format paperback of Pacific Rim fusion cooking. Alas, I was still very naive culinarily when I bought it; I've made a few recipes from it over the years, but as I gradually found out a whole lot more about various Asian cuisines, I got progressively more disillusioned and annoyed with Glossy Fusion Book's peculiar combination of fussiness and inauthenticity (if I'm going to fuss, I at least want it to be to some purpose!). Finally, I succeeded in getting the book soaking wet--I was browsing through it in the bathroom, actually (one of my favorite reading rooms ), and left the poor thing stranded too close to the sink. I tried drying it out, then wondered why I was even bothering. Plonk--into the trash with it!

[Chris Amirault]

Hmmm, Ellen, Freud would have something to say about your soaking that book, in the bathroom no less. I agree that glossy coffee-table is a screaming warning sign, particularly if "fusion" is in the title!

[snowangel]

My new rule of thumb is to check out cookbooks from the library before buying them. If I renew them the max number of times, and then return it and want to check it out again, it's off to Amazon I go!

My biggest disappointment was Barbara Tropp's China Moon cookbook. Her Modern Art of Chinese Cooking is one of the stalwarts in my kitchen. It is stained, dogeared, and very well loved. The China Moon book was full of recipes that called for a myriad of "concoctions" you had to make in advance -- cluttering an already cluttered condiment cupboard to mamoth proportions.

So, out when the concoctions, and I took the book to Half Price Books to sell it. They refused it, and low and behold, their shelves already had plenty of copies languishing.

(I did, however, copy the cookie recipes out first; they were the only winners, IMHO.)

[Chris Amirault]

I agree that CMC is a PITA, Susan -- but her orange chili oil is always in our cupboard. It's perfect for a quick and easy cold noodle dish.

[Gifted Gourmet]

You? What makes you bail on a book?

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I have a reasonably large collection of cookbooks, collected over some 35 years, and I rarely revisit the original cookbooks mainly because I now have acquired a slightly more sophisticated "taste" for what is worth cooking.

By using (1)RecipeGullet and (2) the everpresent Internet for recipes, the older cookbooks now seem somewhat "archaic". I ought to donate them really ...

as Chris says: when do you bail on a book?

which has proven itself to be unreliable because the:

recipes don't work well ...

recipes are incredibly complicated ...

recipes seem "outmoded" ...

[Philanthrophobe]

I dump the out-sized coffee table books with text that reads like the Williams-Sonoma catalog: "Chuck Williams was bicycling through the Provence countryside one autumn afternoon, when the aroma of freshly-baked cookware wafted from a charming 15th century gambling hut, hand-spackled by centuries of lame Flemish whores..." I really can't stand this sort of pretentious nonsense, but my SIL loves books like these; it's no wonder that she thinks she can't cook.

I'll keep a book of unreliable recipes as long as it's still entertaining in some fashion.

[mikeycook]

I have 2 criteria:

1. If more than 1 recipe does not work for me at all, I usually give up (bitten by the snake once, etc.)

2. If I have the book for more than a year or two and I find it and decide I still don't have any interest in cooking from it, or even reading it, I ditch it.

[loiosh]

I dump the out-sized coffee table books with text that reads like the Williams-Sonoma catalog: "Chuck Williams was bicycling through the Provence countryside one autumn afternoon, when the aroma of freshly-baked cookware wafted from a charming 15th century gambling hut, hand-spackled by centuries of lame Flemish whores..." I really can't stand this sort of pretentious nonsense, but my SIL loves books like these; it's no wonder that she thinks she can't cook.

This is very, very funny, mostly because it's true. These cookbooks like to hang out in the big pile on the floor near the checkout at Borders, and they're almost always about Tuscany or Provence. (Tangentially, ever notice that "Tuscan" is frequently deployed on American menus to mean "sloppily-cooked and -presented Italian food"?)

I'll keep a book of unreliable recipes as long as it's still entertaining in some fashion.

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Me too. I have a big collection of 60s picture cookbooks which are heaps of fun to look through. Some are surprising in their quality (killer corn pudding in the BH&G 'Vegetable Book'), or the diversity of the recipes (wow! white people made naan at home in America in 1962!). Others are astonishingly, hilariously bad, or call for ingredients I can't really get even if I wanted them (instant pudding mix, Baker's coconut in the can). Bizarrely, very few of my other cookbooks have any pictures at all.

[andiesenji]

I love cookbooks and have collected a huge number. I have to be seriously annoyed to chuck one in the trash, however it has happened.

A few months ago I was thumbing through a cookbook that I had received as a gift but had never examined it in detail.

It was filled with wonderful photos of dishes - NOT one dish pictured was identified anywhere in the book and the recipes on the near pages had no relation to the photos whatsoever.

Some were covered pies, with no indication what was under the crust. Some were vegetables or had identifiable vegetables in them and some were poultry or meat that could be identified but I don't want to hunt through 200-plus recipes to figure out which one is the one shown in the photo.

I stood on the deck and sailed it into a trash container.

Another book I discarded had some glaring errors in the recipes themselves. I recall in particular that a recipe for a potato dish listed all the ingredients EXCEPT FOR THE POTATOES.

Another recipe had a long list of ingredients and some were duplicated, in particular, salt was listed three times, parsley was listed three times and oil was listed twice.

Needless to day, I did not waste much more time on this one but dumped it immediately. Obviously that publisher (a major house) needed a better proofreader.

[mizducky]

Hmmm, Ellen, Freud would have something to say about your soaking that book, in the bathroom no less. I agree that glossy coffee-table is a screaming warning sign, particularly if "fusion" is in the title!

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Yeah, I know, my unconscious wanted that book gone!

While the glossy coffee-table format is usually a bad sign in cookbooks, I do have one that I find useful--but it's by Madhur Jaffrey, so it's got her touch to help it along. (Plus a signficant chunk of that glossy space is used for an extremely useful glossary illustrated with photos of various Asian ingredients--that alone has proven so useful as to have been worth the price of the book right there.)

I also have a small selection of badly written and edited cookbooks that I keep because I find them funny and endearing. They're all those little fundraiser cookbooks--you know, the kind with the plastic comb bindings put together by church groups and such as fundraisers. Some of them actually have a few good recipes; others are just so bad they're good. One was done as a deliberate parody/prank by a department I once worked for in Microsoft-land. Reading that one is downright scary--and hilarious. Another is a collection of recipes from Africa, many so randomly translated into English as to be nearly indecipherable.

But there is also a "healthy" vegetarian cookbook that I bought in a second-hand store, that I seriously need to do in. Maybe my subconscious can cause that one to wind up soaking in the bathroom sink too.

[Peter B Wolf]

Somehow at my age no one 'gifts' me any cook books anymore. So, no worry about ditching it if not to my liking.

Purchasing one myself is also 'out-dated' (me).

And the ones I NEVER EVER purchased are the ones that contain Measurements in different units.

Sample: 2 ounce Flour

1/4 pound Butter

1/2 pint Milk

180 gram Sugar

2 Tlsp Oil

0.5 Kg Potatoes

( I don't even know what this would make )

The other thing would be listing any ingredient being a mix, i.e. 'One can of Mushroom Soup'

or, specifically this item by a Brand name (Kellogg etc.) (Do they make soup?)

Now, there are exceptions in the above word 'mix'. For instance ethnic spice mixtures or pre-cooked ingredients to facilitate the recipes' perfection are accasionally allowed.

But still, I will not 'ditch/throw out' any of these, since my great, great, great Grand Chiildren will sell them to then Antique Shops

[BarbaraY]

I have some books that I find the recipes don't work but I keep them even though I don't use the recipes. For instance, one is a dessert book by a well known food writer. Every recipe I ever tried from it came out wrong but it gets rave revues on Amazon.com.

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Inquiring minds want to know, BarbaraY! What is it?

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The book is Four Star Desserts byEmily Luchetti. I made three desserts from this book. I made Rhubarb Up-side Down Cake, Pear and Hazelnut Tart. and Banana Cardamom Cake. None of them were right.

I did say I would try more recipes but I never did and it just sits on the shelf waiting.

The cake for the up-side down cake was to delicate for the rhubarb, the Banana Cake was Leaden, the tart had confusing directions and way too much crust.

edited for typos

Edited January 4, 2006 by BarbaraY (log)

[Pontormo]

My biggest disappointment was Barbara Tropp's China Moon cookbook.  Her Modern Art of Chinese Cooking is one of the stalwarts in my kitchen.  It is stained, dogeared, and very well loved.  The China Moon book was full of recipes that called for a myriad of "concoctions" you had to make in advance -- cluttering an already cluttered condiment cupboard to mamoth proportions.

So, out when the concoctions, and I took the book to Half Price Books to sell it.  They refused it, and low and behold, their shelves already had plenty of copies languishing.

(I did, however, copy the cookie recipes out first; they were the only winners, IMHO.)

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Funny you should mention this book, Susan, since I have long felt the same way about the recipes for numerous oils and marinades at the beginning of the book that reappear in subsequent recipes. And in fact, there are two used bookstores that I visit from time to time where this paperbook is often on the shelves.

HOWEVER, since you still have the book, might I rave about the chili-orange oil; Stir-fried Pork Ribbons with Asparagus, Orange and Hot Bean Paste; and Chili-Orange Cold Noodles?

There, I just did. The oil smells wonderful as it's being prepared and lasts forever in the back of the fridge. I give an A++++ to both the fussy stir-fry and the quick noodles.

I figure stocks and ragu require even more time to prepare, so I shouldn't think just because a recipe is a stir-fry, it should be quick. Still, I have made a grand total of six dishes over the ten years I have owned it.

The only low-fat type book I ever purchased was written by Julee Rosso, one of the pair of the Silver Palate team. It asks you make a low-fat blend of nonfat yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese at the beginning of each week to use for all the souffles, etc. you'll be making throughout the course of the rest of the week. Yeah, right. Nonetheless, I have kept it around because the introduction provides a good bit of sound information regarding nutrition. There are two recipes I am addicted to and I keep thinking I will find more one of these days.

As for its opposite, I have to say that I have long been tempted to get rid of Greene on Greens, purchased just because it was inexpensive and there were few books of its nature when it was published in 1984. Eleven pages on kohlrabi!!!!! You gotta love the guy. The writing is lively, full of personality. I may have used one recipe, if that. Everything is slathered in cream and/or cheese.

Still have not attempted the poolishes and levain prep in Bread Alone, though the neglect of this volume was the source of my one culinary resolution for 2006.

I used to siphon off cookbooks too easily, back in the day that one move inspired me to rid myself of a decade's worth of Gourmet, saving only the issue of October 1981.

[BarbaraY]

I keep my copy of China Moon. It does have some very labor intensive recipes but I agree that the chili-orange oil is lovely. My favorite recipe is the Strange Flavor Eggplant. I've even fed it to people who swear they hate eggplant and had no complaints.

[Philanthrophobe]

Please indulge me in a small veer away from the topic....

(Tangentially, ever notice that "Tuscan" is frequently deployed on American menus to mean "sloppily-cooked and -presented Italian food"?)

...oh, yes indeed. And don't even get me started on "rustic." (Forget the cookbook count--if all the eGullet threads discussing adjective abuse were measured, how many miles would they cover?)

Me too.  I have a big collection of 60s picture cookbooks which are heaps of fun to look through.  Some are surprising in their quality (killer corn pudding in the BH&G 'Vegetable Book'), or the diversity of the recipes (wow!  white people made naan at home in America in 1962!).  Others are astonishingly, hilariously bad, or call for ingredients I can't really get even if I wanted them (instant pudding mix, Baker's coconut in the can).  Bizarrely, very few of my other cookbooks have any pictures at all.

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I have a 1926 edition of the Settlement Cookbook: one of the recipes for salad dressing calls for substituting MINERAL oil for vegetable oil, "for those who wish to loose weight." Yep, that'll do it, all right.