Customer Reviews

America's Best Lost Recipes: 121 Heirloom Recipes Too Good to Forget

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I can see why this is getting relatively lower reviews. If you're not familiar with the magazine, it has a feature where readers can write in and ask other readers for recipes that they have lost or have never been able to find. In some cases, the magazine will take one of these recipes and rework it and publish it along with the back story. This is a collection of those recipes, and for some reason, there are a lot of Eastern European ones. For example, Hungarian Cabbage Noodles, Kolotny Borscht, Szekely Goulasch, Kolaches, Potica - you get the idea. Maybe a disproportionate number of readers have an Eastern European background, maybe they are more forgetful with their recipes than other groups, who knows. In any case, I have the book, have tried several recipes and yes, I have an Eastern European background. I like the book so I give it 4 stars. Another good book similarly titled is Marion Cunningham's 'Lost Recipes'.

I have had this cookbook for a week now and have made 4 of the recipes. Each one turned out great, and I can't wait to try another. The Phantom Stew recipe was the best stew I have ever made. These recipes are home-cooking from scratch, no mixes. It's like finding old recipes in Grandma's recipe box. I really like the test kitchen tips and the pictures on assembling, etc. If you have little ones around, the "Fluffies" pancake recipe is a must. I even used wheat flour in place of white and they were excellent! I love this cookbook and would recommend it to anyone who likes to cook/bake from scratch and isn't afraid to try new (old) things!

Here are my biases:
1. I love America's Test Kitchen.
2. I collect "historical" cookbooks -- I like a good story with my recipes.

This cookbook has 121 recipes divided among the following chapters:
-Starters, Salads and Sauces
-Soups Stews and Main Courses
-Breakfast and Breads
-Cakes (most robust section)
-Pies, Puddings and Fruit Desserts
-Cookies and Candies

For those who are frustrated with ATK's approach to recipe writing, this book may be refreshing for you. The background information is about the origin of the recipe and is very condensed. The recipe notes are about a paragraph in length. There are also plenty of photographs, including both finished dishes and how-to pics.

I wouldn't consider these recipes fancy; they represent good, simple American fare. Use these for casual dining. Many of them may seem odd by today's standards. Because some of these recipes are older, you'll see more of our regional differences. I didn't see a lot of Southern or African-influenced old favorites, but I think that's a function of who submitted recipes.

This book is a nice-to-have, but not a must have, at least for my kitchen. I'm looking forward to the Brooklyn Cheese Puffs, Buckwheat Pancakes, Fluffies and Hummingbird Cake.

I recommend this cookbook for collectors or for those who want to reach back and make some forgotten dishes.

I love this cookbook. In typical Cook's Illustrated style all the recipes use ingredients that are easily found in any grocery store and contain directions that are detailed and easily followed along with photo illustrations for some of the more complicated steps. I can understand why some people thumb through the cookbook and don't think the recipes look good, some of them sound disgusting by the title alone (Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake - sounds very unappetizing but the sauerkraut adds moisture to the cake and a texture that is coconut like. The end result has no sauerkraut flavor. Oh and it is sinfully delicious!).

My only complaint is that some of the recipes weren't all that lost. Granted in a few cases ATK offers a twist on the recipe (Real carrot cake uses a rum glaze instead of the standard cream cheese frosting). But in a few cases the recipe seems just like the one I was already using (Gram's Doughnuts - though very good - wasn't different from the other doughnut recipes I had in any of my other cookbooks).

If you get a chance, thumb through the book before you buy it. It certainly won't be for everyone. But right now this is my favorite cookbook. The Monkey Bread and Just Chicken Pie alone are worth the price of admission.

ATK scores again. Page after page of wonderful, everyday recipes. I tried three in the first week and will definitely use them again. L Interesting enough for the seasoned cook, but not intimidating for the beginner. I also appreciate the editorial notes when the ATK chefs modified the original recipe. ove the wire binding inside the hard cover because it protects the wire from counter splatters while allowing the book to stay open to the recipe. Just a little sorry my family's "Peppernut" cookie didn't make the cut.

I got this from the library and then had to order it. I've tried four recipes and they are all wonderful. My husband, who doesn't really like ham, loved the Ham Pie. The Blueberry bait boy is wonderful. The Kolaches were very tasty, low in calories and little sugar. The Ruskas were good (although could use a little more spice)but the dough was amazing and I'm going to use it in other recipes. I'm eager to try more.

The stories were an interesting read especially those that were invented in times of shortage.

For those others who wrote critiques. It would be nice if you had put what the error was you found.

This is one of the more useful cookbooks I have seen in recent years, and I expect my copy to become quite dog-eared as time goes on. I give it highest possible recommendation.

It is the happy union of 2 useful but nettlesome culinary resources:
**grandma's recipes - heirloom recipes proudly handed down through the generations that are surefire crowd pleasers. Sadly, they do not always work as advertised, and are often lacking in key details.
**Cooks Illustrated - famous for re-engineering recipes that always work. Sadly, the longish and rather fussy recipes are not always better than standard ones.

The result is a collection of rather amazing recipes that always work.

The recipes were submitted by readers of Cook's Country magazine, which explains their high quality. The editors selected the best of the best, and came up with a variety of distinctive and creative recipes that you will want to try. Even the editors snuck in a few of their own favorites (strictly speaking, some of them are not authentic, viz Chocolate Blackout Cake or Red Velvet Cake).

The recipes are fastidious, but there are a few problems:
**the flour measurements are all in cups rather than weight, and the editors do not tell you if they used spoon-and-sweep, sift-and-measure, or scoop-and-sweep. However, in a table at the very back, a cup of flour is listed as 5 oz, implying that they use scoop-and-sweep.
**the molasses ingredient is listed as mild or robust flavor, and the editors are careful to not mention any name brands. Sadly, I have a bottle of Grandma's in my pantry, and it is not so labeled, but says only `unsulphured'.
**in the cake recipes, most do not explicitly tell you when or how to unmold cooled cakes. It just assumes you do it at the proper time.

The book's production imitates those spiral-bound, amateurish, church cookbooks. In other words, too cute by half. Happily, the pages open up flat. There are many full page, full color pictures, along with smaller and useful black and white ones. Each recipe tidily takes up one or two full pages. Each recipe has a useful preface and testing notes.

More than half the recipes are baking/sweets/dessert types. I would have preferred fewer of these, and more of the casserole/snack/salad type recipes. The recipe count:
Starters, Salads, Sides, and Sauces = 16
Soups, Stews, and Main Courses = 23
Breakfast and Breads = 15
Cakes = 31
Pies, Puddings, and Fruit Desserts = 19
Cookies and Candies = 17

The sturdy binder that allows the recipes to lay flat, the shiny pages, the older recipes I don't find elsewhere and colorful images are pluses. My chief disappointment was with the few number of entrees and huge number of desserts and baked goods. I need main entry suggestions that are fast, economical and tasty. What was there was OK but too few in number.

If the America's Test Kitchen folks would take the recipes from their new The Cook's Country Cookbook: Regional and Heirloom Favorites Tested and Reimagined for Today's Home Cooks, and put them into the format and binding of this text, then they'd have one of the best cookbooks on the market!

I have rarely come across a cookbook which is as user-friendly as "Lost Recipes" -- it's sturdy, it lies open perfectly, the paper stock is heavy and resists stains, the recipes are one-per-page with terrific color photos alongside many of the finished dishes, the fonts are quite readable, and there's a nice back section of lined pages for one's personal notes.

Unfortunately, a large number of the recipes in here are not of a sort which are going to hold much appeal for most home chefs in terms of feeding their families. Kolotny Borscht (p. 32) and Chocolate Marlow (p. 168) are just not the types of dishes which excite one's taste buds.

I bought this book, chiefly for two reasons:

1. to find some of the so-called "lost recipes" which I anticipated being in here (and they were not), and,

2. to have some really old-timey, good-quality, home-cooking recipes.


These expectations having not been fulfilled, this cookbook has been lying around in the way for a couple of months now. I'm going to pass it on to a niece who enjoys making recipes that are out on the fringe in the hope that she can find something in this text.

The staff of America's Test Kitchen is comprised of some really well-schooled and knowledgeable people but I wish they had worked with different "lost recipes" than the ones I found here. There are a total of 121 recipes to be found throughout the text and my wife and I could discover only six that we had any interest in trying -- here are the lonely six which we liked:

Cheese Puffs, (p. 3)

Szekely Goulash (Pork Stew with Sauerkraut), (p. 38)

Texas Chili Dogs, (p. 40)

Naked Ladies with Their Legs Crossed, (p. 68)

Gram's Doughnuts, (p. 71)

7-Up Cake, (p. 113)

For the price of the book, six recipes of interest manifested a notable disappointment. For a superb America's Test Kitchen Cookbook (in terms of both the format and the recipe quality), get this one: The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, Heavy-Duty Revised Edition

I almost didn't buy this cookbook, after reading the reviews here... but I'm glad I did. This week I've made fluffies (egg white pancakes), blueberry boy bait, and the poor man stroganoff. All have been excellent (be sure to use lots of oil in the pan for the fluffies). I love reading the stories behind the recipes and the extra mile the Cooks Country people go to find out when the recipe was first printed. Some of them I don't really consider lost, like "mud puddle cake" (well that's what we call it), as well as a few of the others... but it's the history behind the recipes that makes this collection stand out. I really appreciate the stories that relate to America's melting pot past. As much as I wish there were more entrees and such, I'm loving all of the cakes and such. This will be an excellent collection to have around for holiday baking.

I also highly recommend Marion Cunningham's "Lost Recipes" book. Her recipes seemed more "lost" to me, and all were fantastic as well.