Customer Reviews

Toll House Tried and True Recipes

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This is the classic cookbook based on the recipes served at The Toll House restaurant, from the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie. That recipe (for Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies) is included here, and has a slightly different technique than that on the back of the Nestle package, which improves the texture of the cookie.

This is a small, all purpose cookbook, of the Joy of Cooking variety. There is an extensive section on kitchen hints and menu planning in the beginning of the book. The recipes cover the full range from appetizers to jams and jellies. These are pretty close to fool-proof, though obviously from a different era.

If you're into food history it is worth picking up a copy. It is a stand alone book, but it is frozen in time as well. Even more fascinating is the full cookbook these recipes are from, which is long out of print. This is a fine substitute, though.

Thrilled to see this book in print again. I use a worn paperback edition from the 1950's. I remember dining at the Toll House restaurant with my aunts and uncles and cousins to celebrate my grandmother's birthday, probably in the late 1950s. Along with my grandmother and Julia Child's Mastering the Art of Cooking, Ruth Wakefield's recipes taught me to love to cook. Today we can adapt them for lower fat, etc. as all good cooks do adapt recipes. Whether you make Lobster Toll House, or brown bread or mocha chiffon pie the results taste as good today as they did at the restaurant many years ago. A wonderful gift for any aspiring cook or sentimental New Englanders.

This is a rare cookbook . It came in good condition . The cost was four times the amount that I paid for it in 1969 . But that is ameinable to today's cost of living .

Was delighted to see this cookbook is available. I bought extras for gifts. We, of course, had to make the original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies first. My grandsons and I conducted an experiment using the original recipe and one that has won at a County Fair for three years in a row. Our family and friends all agreed the original is still the best. Can't wait to try more recipes.

I have had my copy for 25 years, bought in 1986 at the Henry Ford Museum. Of all of the cookbooks in my collection, this is the first one I go to. I will need to replace it soon as it is showing its age. Over the years, I have picked up a few copies in used bookstores and given them as part of a wedding gift to the delight of the brides. Highly recommended.

I thought it would be interesting to have a book from the inventer of the origional toll house cookies. It is not just desserts for those of you who are not that interested in baking. I know many people hear toll house and think Neslie products and chocolate, actually, I think Neslie was one of her bakers back then.

I found the recipes to be nice and simple, as it calls for mostly inexpensive common ingredients that could be found in grocery stores. That's what shows you its not what you spend that makes a recipe good necessarly, as long as you use good natural ingredients. I know some reviewers said they use lower fat substitutes, which is understandable, but I usually like to follow the recipes just as they are and serve them in moderation. Most of them do not have an execesive amount of fat when eaten in small portions, as long as you go easy on the sweets. Just remember it is an old book, so some names of things have changed. For example, when it calls baking soda, it says soda. When it says shortening, it in fact means any type of fat including butter, which I was glad to read because I like the flavore of butter in certain things. Additioanlly, when it says sour milk, I use butter milk which is pretty much the same thing, however she does tell you how to turn regular milk into sour milk. (just know that it does not mean spoiled milk). Additioally, I do not think you have to sift all purpose flour anymore unless it says sift after measuring, as now flour is sifted but it cannot hurt to do so. I noticed another reviewer said they used the technique in this book for making the famous toll house chocolate chip cookies (called chocolate crunch.) I noticed the ingredients is the same but she had a little bit of a different mixing method, which I have to try sometime, although I suppose the change could have to do with the different processing method of ingredients.
Oh and some of her dessert recipes call for pastry flour, which is kind of expensive today and you might have to go to a special store. However, I have made my own pastry flour by combining 1 and 1/3 cups of all purpose flour and 2/3 a cup of cake flour and had good results. You could probably even just use cake flour, as I think they just didn't make cake flour back then. King Aurthor's cake flour I believe is more similar to pastry flour as it is not chemically altered.

Remember though this is toll house before it was a brand, so some of the recipes that were on chocolate and morsel packages since the 70s are not necessarly in the book, as they were probably neslie recipes. Still there are a lot of great old recipes. She uses the minimal proportion size (the amount in her macoroni and cheese is probably equivalent to the size of a craft mac and cheese box) but she does suggest you half the recipes. I like that you don't have huge portions, as I always wind up halving recipes. I think she wanted to make the proportions a smaller size to brides or future brids or anybody who wants to learn to cook could practive.
It is an old book so a lot of food items that are found in books writen a bit later were probably not that popular then, such as quiche recipes and Italian food (or perhaps in rural new England everything was mostly meat and potatos back then, not saying that's not fine) but there are some nice old meals and desserts that you do not see much today and in its origional form, for example, the online chiffon pies recipes are often made with jello brand gelatine and cool whip, which does not appleal to me. Hers are made with egg whites and the base is made with eggs yolks. Now people are concerned about bacteria or just want an easier way to make stuff, and (understandably) recipes are changed. But I like to see the original recipes; as I like cooking from scratch and if you are worried about eating raw eggs, you could pastarize them at home. (IF you prefer and older with a more modern variety you might like the Joy of Cooking 1960s version or a later version or Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Okay, I bought this because it has the recipe for TollHouse chocolate chip cookies written by the lady who created chocolate chip cookies(and no, it wasn't Mrs.Fields). This has a lot of old time kitchen advice my Grandmas would have given if they had given advice. That old time common sense kind of advice, especially for young brides. Look, I've been cooking for 45 years and I can still appreciate good advice. You never stop learning(if you know what's good for you) and this is also why I guess I love Paula Dean so much. She's an old country cook, too. It also compliments my heritage Betty Crocker cookbook from the 60s from which I learned to cook(my mother wasn't a cook, my one grandma lived too far away to spend time in her kitchen, and I couldn't spend ALL my time watching my other grandma cook, though I helped her a lot). I just wish I had watched my Dad make Potato Soup(he was the champian potato soup maker and I don't even think Bobby Flay would have dared issue him a throwdown, having become discouraged right off the bat thinking he had to try to out do my Dad at Potato soup would have made even Paula Dean have second thoughts(sorry, Paula Darlin', but Daddy was the Potato soup KING). Maybe that's because Dad's Grandma was Irish? You betcha!