The Observer Food Monthly’s expert team has chosen what is in their opinions the fifty greatest cookbooks (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds). They’ve published the eleventh through fiftieth selections and will publish the top ten on Sunday. I’m eager to see what their top selections are. Apparently, The French Menu Cookbook, with which I’m not familiar, is their top pick. I’ll have to check it out.
There are lots of favorites in the names that they have released. Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat was picked as #42, Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking, The Greens Cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
I’m happy to say that one of my favorite books, Edouard de Pomiane’s delightful French Cooking in Ten Minutes was picked as #41. This is a book so charming that it has remained in print since the 1930s, loved by many. I think so highly of it than whenever I find a used copy of it I buy it so I can give it to someone. A lovely book.
There are some books that I expected to find there that I didn’t. So, for example, The Joy of Cooking was not in their list. Perhaps it’s in the top ten or perhaps it’s too American. I prefer by far the 1940s edition. It makes a great snapshot of American cuisine 70 years ago and is virtually encyclopedic in that role.
My all-time favorite cookbook, Saulnier’s Le Repertoire de La Cuisine, isn’t on the list either.
Picking best cookbooks is something of a challenge since nearly everybody has an opinion and a really good cookbook must attempt a number of contradictory tasks. A good cookbook should be entertaining and informative. It should also teach you how to cook and contain good recipes. I do not believe that any one book can serve all of those ends. To be entertaining you must to some degree sacrifice being informative and teaching beginners how to cook competes for page space with presenting good recipes.
Saulnier’s book, for example, completely sacrifices being entertaining and teaching cooking to being informative and presenting recipes. You must already know how to cook to use it but once that hurdle has been crossed it is peerless.
Perhaps the most felicitous combination of being entertaining with information, teaching, and recipes is James Beard’s autobiography/cookbook Delights and Prejudices. I suspect it won’t make the list. As well as being the kindliest of the arts cooking is also an ephemeral one.
I share your fondness for books by Beard. I separate my books into technique books, entertainment books and recipe books. We have undertaken the acquisition of skills pertaining to cooking Indian food this summer. I got a couple of technique books and now a couple of recipe books. No need for entertainment yet.
I still use Joy Of Cooking for pie recipes.
Steve
I’ll be interested to see if any of Fuschia Dunlop’s books make the top ten. I got her Land of Plenty last year and it’s really terrific, the best book on Chinese cooking I’ve found, at least in English.
I’ll have to check it out.
Is the top ten list online yet? I looked this morning and was unable to find it. Personally I’m to new to the world of cooking to have a favorite, though I tend to like the more informative ones like the series that Cook’s Illustrated puts out.
See here.
Thank you