Joy of Cooking
I own a lot of cookbooks. I mean a lot. Some I have bought. Others I have gotten from the Good Cook book club at various times. But most of them I have gotten for free at work or through friends in the publishing industry. I am sure that I have way more than 101 cookbooks. I can't even bring them all home. I have dozens in my office, just waiting for the day that I get a bigger apartment. I have cookbooks for almost every kind of international cuisine, baking, chocolate, general cooking, 30-minute, celebrity chef, gluten-free, vegetarian, scientific reference, historical, and cultural studies, not to mention food writing and memoir. I have a McGee, and I even have a copy of the brand new edition of the Oxford Companion to Food, the be-all and end-all of food reference and history. Most food lovers are not so lucky.
I am not telling you all this to establish some sort of food cred, merely to say that of all of famous and obscure cookbooks I have acquired in my 28 years, I have never owned a copy of the Joy of Cooking, the standard American bible of cooking, nor have I had any interest in doing so. Why? For me, it symbolized a sort of frumpy, housewife-y approach to cooking and food. Cooking by necessity, not cooking with true passion (despite whatever the title might suggest). It symbolized staid, American-only food, recipes for which I could most certainly find elsewhere.
But guess what? (You can see where this is going, right?) It's actually a pretty cool book, despite its dowdy reputation. I snagged a copy of the new 75th anniversary edition yesterday, and it seemed to have a recipe for everything I could think of. Where else could you find a recipe for Shoo-Fly Pie and Snickerdoodles *and* Pad Thai and Tart Tatin? It's so, so comprehensive for all kinds of food. I haven't tried any recipes yet, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
I am not telling you all this to establish some sort of food cred, merely to say that of all of famous and obscure cookbooks I have acquired in my 28 years, I have never owned a copy of the Joy of Cooking, the standard American bible of cooking, nor have I had any interest in doing so. Why? For me, it symbolized a sort of frumpy, housewife-y approach to cooking and food. Cooking by necessity, not cooking with true passion (despite whatever the title might suggest). It symbolized staid, American-only food, recipes for which I could most certainly find elsewhere.
But guess what? (You can see where this is going, right?) It's actually a pretty cool book, despite its dowdy reputation. I snagged a copy of the new 75th anniversary edition yesterday, and it seemed to have a recipe for everything I could think of. Where else could you find a recipe for Shoo-Fly Pie and Snickerdoodles *and* Pad Thai and Tart Tatin? It's so, so comprehensive for all kinds of food. I haven't tried any recipes yet, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
posted by Heather at Thursday, November 09, 2006
4 Comments:
Hi! Your blog is lovely. Scones are lovely, too. I made some lemony ones the other day...
I used this old 1960s version of the Joy of Cooking today to make Fudge--it's a very frumpety looking book indeed!
Hi Joanna! Thanks! Love the name of your blog. I'll check it out!
Joy is definitely my go to book for the basics like pancakes and such. We have an older version too and even though I'm fairly certain I will never need to know how to cook a squirrel, I love the history of it.
My husband has a copy of The Joy of Cooking that dates from the 1980s which he brought with him when we moved in together.
I find I sometmes use it as a reference, but even that not so much. I never cook from it because I don't find the recipes that inspiring. However my husband uses their brownie recipe every year at Christmas-time and his brownies are wonderful.
I haven't looked at the most recent Joy and maybe that would inspire me more. I'll be interested to hear how you like it.
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