"Dave Smith" > wrote:
> Donald Martinich wrote:
>> I see a lot of people are pushing Joy of Cooking. It's a good reference
>> for lots of basic techniques. On the other hand it's full of mediocre
>> recipes. (OK- this is subjective and you may like them) My suggestions
>> would include Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and for more
>> traditional recipes there are 2 or 3 James Beard basic cookbooks. Since
>> you're learning to cook you may as well learn how to eat well.
>> Good luck and have fun!
>
> I am not sure I would dismiss them as mediocre. A lot of their recipes are
> pretty darned good. They don't have a lot of recipes for various cuts of
> meat or various types of cakes, pastries, salads etc., but they have at
> least one of everything, and some of the recipes are pretty darned good. A
> lot of them are regulars in this house.

The Joy of Cooking has most of the recipes for what I'd call the "classics" of
American cooking from the era of roughly from the 1930s to the 1960s. Maybe they
seem mediocre or dated to someone much younger than me. To me, it's comfort
food. In terms of breadth, I think there are few cookbooks that cover as many
topics, from cocktails to main courses to desserts, from cookware to how to set
a table for formal dinners, etc. It doesn't have things that would have been
considered "exotic" in the era it was written that many consider commonplace
now.

Of course, with the Joy of Cooking, one has to be a little specific about the
edition. I'm not talking about that piece of crap that came out in the 1990s.
The lastest edition tries to get back to the spirit of the earlier editions
(though I'm not sure how successfully).

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