YES! This is the way. And to these, which I have too, add Fucshia Dunlop for Chinese, Debora Madison for general vegetarian, Maya Kaimal for truly exquisite Southern Indian, and pre-1980 Joy of Cooking for general wisdom (I have 3 copies).

I've got another 100 or so that I dip into from time to time. Often I like to see a second opinion, or even a third.

Absorb a healthy chunk of these and now you're prepared, as my parent commenters point out, to attack the internet. A lot of garbage recipes out there.

I remember getting a copy of the Joy of Cooking a couple of decades ago specifically for the peanut butter cookie recipe (a childhood favorite), and was SO disappointed in the results that I eventually tracked down a 1975 copy to compare. The specifics elude me at the moment, but IIRC, the majo recipe differences came down to about twice as much peanut butter in the 1975 version, and twice as much flour in the new one.

Like, the results aren't even close to being comparable. The new recipe produces something you might call "peanut butter flavored shortbread", I guess.

Yeah I was a hard no on the new edition (my first copy, 1979, was a going-to-college gift from my truly wonderful parents-as-cooks). The reason being was when it came out multiple people noticed that the truly exquisite JoC brownie recipe was now mediocre. Why would they do that?

This feature of very long lived cookbooks with inconstant author lists needs to be better understood.

Thanks for the tip vegetarian cookbook author. That sounds exactly what I’ve been looking for recently. Any book of hers in particular can you recommend?

I have a hardback first ed. of and can strongly recommend "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone". I see there is a second edition. I would be wary. Even Fuschia Dunlop modifies favorites in succeeding editions, and I hate that.

We're not even slightly vegetarian, except in the Anthony Bourdain way, likely paraphrasing: "If you could cook vegetarian like this, fucking hippies, I'd eat vegetarian every day." Yup.

The thing about competent vegetarian dishes is that they are a pleasure to eat. But it is hard to get a pure "American" vegetarian cuisine from individual cooks that isn't hmm, dreary. The thing about Madison is her recipes are not dreary. I often consult her soups and stews recipes for instance to understand how she is flavoring these w/o meat (and especially, meat stocks).

Haha thanks. I’m not a vegetarian by any means either, but vegetarian food done right, as you say, can be delicious.

Yes. Also a carnivore at heart, but I only cook meat 2 or 3 times a week tops, and have several veggie meals that I totally enjoy. Although my wife and I have a joke argument where we have to decide which we would give up; if we had to: meat OR Cheese. This is a tough one. I think meat would narrowly win, for the massive diversity it offers, and because (as far as I know) it is largely impossible to barbeque cheese.

Also, I remember seeing a comment somewhere to the effect that Indian food is the only cuisine where being Vegan doesn't become a chore.

Cheese-based stuffed eggplant !!

Did my best to match the ISBN and ordered a second hand first edition. Thank you for the recommendation.

Edit: ISBN ostensibly 9780767900140

Try add small pieces of tempeh to your any sauce you cook, it will sky rocket the Unami. I prefer grill it first with oignon/garlic but you can also add it after with the liquids (tomato sauce of course, I’m meditatean). Cook at least 5 minutes because the taste may be too strong if you didn’t try before.

New Complete Vegetarian by Rose Elliot is a well used book in our kitchen.

Small World! I have a copy of her book Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking from 1982, bought when I was a broke student. I had already planned earlier today to use one of its recipes for dinner tonight: Brown Nut Rissoles. !!!!

It's been a great source of inspiration and I know a few of the recipes essentially by heart. My main comment now is that the ingredients lists reflect the range of veg and herbs that you typically could find in a 1982 UK shop, and I often substitute more exotic ingredients that weren't readily available then.

As others have said elsewhere here, after many years you typically don't need to slavishly follow the steps in a recipe (except perhaps for baking where precise ratios of ingredients can be important). For some cooks (notably Delia Smith) I've simplified their recipes over the years to reduce the number of discrete steps, utensils and cooking time involved. The results might not look as camera-ready perfect as the pic in the books, but the taste can be indistinguishable, especially when throwing something together quickly for a weekday evening meal.

This is exactly what we do too. I even have a hobby of collapsing Julia Child (and now David Chang) recipes into something... manageable in say 2 hrs? I did the David Chang wings and yeah the Super Bowl party was destroyed by them (omfg never had wings like this) but good lawd they took a lot of effort, spread over multiple days.

The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by John Folse is the essential cookbook for those cuisines if you're looking for authenticity. Folse doesn't play with his food like other chefs in the area, he simply recites the recipes that people have been preparing for over a hundred years.

Thank you very much for telling us about this. Most of my cooking of Cajun and Creole cuisine for the last 30 years or so have come from the gumbopages.com. But the internets are ephemeral, and I need something like this to survive the cuisinapacolypse. $70 for Hardcover – December 1, 2004. Worth it?

Thank you I will check that out, I am a bit annoyed I have a shelf of cookbooks but most are kinda crap. But happy to spend money on a good book that quickly pays for itself after a meal or 2.

Adding another cookbook to this excellent list: Wok by Kenji Alt-Lopez gives a fantastic, technique - based introduction to Chinese and Korean cooking, and includes very readable chapters detailing how to get good outcomes from his recipes. It's seriously levelled up my cooking skills.