The best French cookbooks, according to French chefs

It’s always enlightening to learn which cookbooks chefs find useful and inspirational. When it comes to French cookbooks, who better than Jacques Pépin, Daniel Boulud, and Dominique Ansel to weigh in on which of these cookbooks they recommend. That’s what Lauren Masur of The Kitchn thinks, too. She interviewed these esteemed chefs and compiled a list of the best French cookbooks. 

The volumes they selected reside on thousands of EYB Member Bookshelves. Up first is The Escoffier Cookbook, which was recently indexed. The 1975 version of this timeless classic is the one selected for indexing and it is a whopper, containing nearly 3,000 recipes! Of this work, Pépin says “Anything that has to do with classic French cooking and the nomenclature will be in this book. All of the division of the different parts of the kitchen will be well explained. It’s a very important cookbook for a professional in the kitchen.”

It will come as no surprise that Larousse Gastronomique (also indexed) made the list. It too is a comprehensive tome, surpassing even Escoffier with an impressive 3,880 recipes, along with traditional French techniques, tucked inside its covers. Both of those works pale in comparison to Le Répertoire de La Cuisine by Louis Salnier, which contains over 7,500 recipes. It is not as well known as the other two books, but also offers a comprehensive look at French cuisine.  Two other books also made the cut on the chefs’ list. Read more over at The Kitchn, including the chefs’ take on each of these masterful volumes.