Which cookbook is the best of all time?

There is no way to achieve consensus on which cookbook is the best of all time. Nevertheless, The LA Times reports that a poll asked that very question of 400 food professionals in Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The overall winner was Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson (published as The Whole Beast in the US). Nose to Tail beat out classics like Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking.

One interesting aspect of this poll is that it breaks down the results by categories of voter, including country and occupation. Nose to Tail Eating may have won overall, but it didn’t even make the top 10 in the United States. Americans favored Mastering the Art of French Cooking, followed by Joy of Cooking and The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

Among cookbook authors, Mastering also came in first, followed by French Provincial Cooking, Joy of Cooking, Essentials of Italian Cooking and A Book of Middle Eastern Food. Chefs, meanwhile, chose completely different books. Topping that list were The French Laundry Cookbook, White Heat, Larousse Gastronomique, and the afore-mentioned Nose to Tail Eating.

Food bloggers also picked totally different books, with How to Eat by Nigella Lawson and The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater topping their list. You can dive deep into the poll results to find out which authors favor which cookbooks, although it takes some digging. You can view all of the information at 1000 Cookbooks, the website that sponsored the poll. (Then after you’ve added a few more cookbooks to your collection, remember to put them to your EYB Bookshelf!)