Cookbook all-stars
April 18, 2015 by DarcieWhen there are tens of thousands of cookbooks available (the EYB Library currently has over 144,000 books), how can you possibly winnow down a list of favorites to less than a dozen? Epicurious decided to do just that with the ten cookbooks every home cook should own.
After starting with a long list of 50 cookbooksand soliciting contributions from readers to expand the list, the editors of Epicurious sat down to “commiserate, kvetch, argue, and barter” until they whittled the list to a final, definitive ten. In setting out the criteria they used to determine what being “the best” meant, the editors had some characteristics in mind.
The noted that a great cookbook contains “delicious recipes that work, beautiful photography, writing that inspires and intrigues, and, most importantly, it covers a type of food that people are excited to eat. A truly amazing cookbook earns its stains through frequent use, and can almost become a family member as it reappears year after year at birthdays and holidays.”
Instead of just choosing 10 cookbooks from the same genre, they selected the books “to function as a library, as a group: If you only own ten cookbooks, these are the ten you should own.” The article further explains the shortcuts they had to take to come up with the list, including an American-centric focus and little attention to bread or cocktails.
So which books made the final cut? Some of them are obvious, like Joy of Cooking, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Plenty. Others may surprise you, like Momofuku, Baking From My Home to Yours, and the Yankee Church Supper Cookbook. Rounding out the list are The Taste of Country Cooking, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, and Mexico One Plate at a Time.
Do you agree with this list? What changes would you
make?
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