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Comment by than3

3 years ago

No such book actually exists. There's a french book that covers basic/common procedures and a reader's digest book but those are about it; and they definitely are not beginner oriented.

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than3

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flir  3 years ago

Delia Smith's How To Cook taught me a lot. Three volumes. I just yanked volume 1 off the shelf and the first three chapters are on eggs: boiling, poaching, frying, scrambling, baking, frittata, tortilla, souffle omelettes, egg whites, egg yolks, meringues, custard, souffles, hollandaise. The next four chapters are flour.

sureglymop  3 years ago

There is such a book here in Switzerland called Tiptopf. It even includes sections like "where in your fridge should you put which foods" and covers all the basics. It's very popular and almost a national treasure at this point. In high school here there is a cooking/housework class which is where pretty much every student gets this book. So due to the education system alone almost every person should have this book.

shever73  3 years ago

> No such book actually exists.

It certainly does.

Someone bought Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course as a wedding present for me and my wife. We were already reasonably proficient in the kitchen, but this book goes from the basics of boiling an egg, cooking perfectly fluffy rice onto more complex recipes. We've bought it for newlyweds since.

ubercore  3 years ago

Sure it does. https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-...

Would be useful for any home cook (I have it in my kitchen)

  • inferiorhuman  3 years ago

    The CIA has a huge blind spot for non-European food. Check out the Chinese Cooking Demystified youtube channel. They did a video on the CIA's laughably bad mapo tofu recipe. It was bad enough that simply following the instructions got their neighbors up in arms.

    • salawat  3 years ago

      ...The world, for just a moment, was a far more interesting place. Then the realization that no, the Central Intelligence Agency does not have a crack division of crypto-culinary experts in the midst of a cold war, attempting to thwart or coordinate psyops in which they sabotage other nations morale through spreading deliberate, yet subtly disasterous cooking advice.

      4 replies →

ghaff  3 years ago

Cook's Illustrated Best Recipes goes into a lot of the background techniques and rationales. They have an online actual cooking course as well, A number of Alton Brown's books. Cooking for Geeks from O'Reilly. There are quite a few books and sites out there that go into techniques for different foods. Of course, there are also specialized examples as for bread baking.

citizenkeen  3 years ago

There are so many books on the technique of cooking, not the recipes.

Time to watch Cunningham's Law in action.

therealcamino  3 years ago

That's just not true. Every generation has its own version of this. In the 60s-70s, it was The Joy of Cooking. In the 90s it was How To Cook Everything. Based on the replies there are some candidates for today.

  • ghaff  3 years ago

    The Joy of Cooking still takes up the bulk of its pages with recipes. Though pretty much all cookbooks did pre-Web. You got recipes out of big cookbook volumes (as well as newspapers etc.)

    I agree with your basic point though. And there are tons of cookbooks today that do spend pages on relevant techniques--though certainly some are celebrity chef memoirs interspersed with recipes and high-quality photoss.

  • Pxtl  3 years ago

    For me it was the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. For example, the section on cream soups is a detailed explanation of the process of making any cream soup, with a table of details and variations for each vegetable. I assume they didn't test every variation, but the first part obviously showed enough first hand experience to teach understanding not just rote repetition.

sclarisse  3 years ago

The Modern Family Cookbook by Meta Given. Copyright 1942-1953.

Table of Contents: Acknowledgments. Introduction. Meal planning (45pa). Food shopping (12pa). Cooking (530pa): measurements, beverages, breads, cake, candy, cereals, cheese, cookies, desserts, eggs, fish, meat, meat sundries, pastry and pies, poultry, preserving and canning, salads, sandwiches, sauces, soup, vegetables. Deep fat frying, leftovers, misc.

jsmith99  3 years ago

Harold McGee's books are classics: informed by modern science but intended for home cooks and covering all common ingredients and techniques. They're more like reference books then something readable though.

  • dagw  3 years ago

    Harold McGee has two main book. On Food and Cooking is his more famous and 'hard core' book and definitely not something I would recommend to beginner cooks. The ratio of scientific background to useful advice is much more geared towards someone who really wants to deeply understand cooking. It also spends a lot of time talking about the history and anthropology of cooking, which while interesting, isn't useful if you just want to learn how to make a tastier omelet.

    The Key To Good Cooking on the other hand is a much better book for home cooks and focuses entirely on practical ingredients and techniques and is organised in a way that makes it much easier to find exactly the advice you need as you need it.