samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 18d Anna's post had me thinking about the JOY OF COOKING, an utter classic of American cuisine its excellent wiki page notes that it's been in print continuously since 1936 and sold 20 million copies en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_of_... Here are the editions; I have the 9th but the jacket is long gone
34 likes 5 replies
Replies
No person could cook through the entirety of this venerable food encyclopedia but one good place to start is with the excellent and very simple cakes
while every 'foodie' clamors for their own copy of npc i have always recommended 'joy ...' (the 'about' sections are worth their weight in gold), coupled with mcgee's 'on food and cooking' to those asking after a starting point. the recipe for success is technique and product knowledge over recipes.
I have the seventh edition, with an inscription from my grandmother. Aside from a local women’s social group cookbook from where my family is originally from, this was my first real cookbook when I moved to my first apartment.
I’ve always thought that its second title could have been The Joy of Cross Indexing. There were recipes that had so many references to other recipes that it was like an analog model for HyperCard. Still, I managed to learn a lot from it.
I have a few editions, and they're worth hanging on to because the recipes change. The differences between the copy my grandmother got when she married around WWII is very different from the one I got 20 years ago.