Joy of Cooking (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author) "Put this puzzle together and you will find milk, cheese and eggs, meat, fish, beans and cereals, greens, fruits and root vegetablesfoods that contain our..." (more)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Since its first private printing in 1931, The Joy of Cooking has been teaching Americans how to cook. Craig Claiborne calls it "a masterpiece of clarity" and Julia Child says it's the one book she'd keep if she could only have one English title on the shelf. The nearly 5,000 recipes are handily organized by meal and ingredient, and no cooking instruction goes unexplained, so you can finally understand the difference between poaching and braising. The book includes nutritional information as well as an extremely helpful list of measures and equivalents. You'll find a version of every recipe your mother ever cooked, along with straightforward instructions for cooking more exotic specialties such as turtles and muskrats. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

James Beard

The classic work, which covers the entire gamut of kitchen procedures and is easy to use.

Cecily Brownstone

Important as is the information in this encyclopedic cookbook, it's the imprint of Irma Rombauer's and Marion Rombauer Becker's personalities that makes Joy of Cooking the best loved cookbook to come out of these United States.

Julia Child

...it is definitely number one on my list...the one book of all cookbooks in English that I would have on my shelf -- if I could have but one.

Craig Claiborne

The finest basic cookbook available. It is a masterpiece of clarity.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 849 pages
• Publisher: Signet (November 1, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451071662
• ISBN-13: 978-0451071668
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (153 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,652,868 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

207 of 214 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Contents excellent, book quality horrid, March 21, 2001

By	KaguyaHime (Fomalhaut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Joy of Cooking Comb-Bound Edition: Revised and Expanded (Plastic Comb)

This review is for the spiral-bound edition.

I'll start with the written content: this cookbook is a complete guide not just for cooking, but for food as a whole. There are recipes for every conceivable type of consumable. Beverages (nonalcoholic and alcoholic), appetizers, snacks, candies, jellies, desserts, sauces/toppings, stuffings, and what goes in-between: simple entrees to full-blown multi-course dinners. The instructions are detailed and easy to understand. Unlike cookbooks that tell you to "cut into fillets and braise until done" or "serve with a piquant sauce," the directions take you through step-by-step, always explaining what is really meant. The ingredients range from items found in any supermarket to the more obscure near-alien things that will require serious searching, although most of the ingredients are quite reasonable. There are numerous illustrations throughout, finally letting mankind in on the secret of why some coffee cakes look like they were made from the inside out.

Not just recipes, either. This book includes detailed information on selecting, testing for/maintaining freshness, storing (including an entire chapter on freezing), preparing, and cutting the food. Different types of fruit are explained. Half a dozen pages are devoted to informing the reader about wine. Cuts of beef are explained here; JoC finally explains why chuck is chuck and tip is tip, and where they come from. Table decor, place settings, and appropriate wine glasses are explained too.

The writing style is joyful. Clearly, the authors do not just enjoy cooking, serving, and eating the food... they like talking about it, too. There is a gleeful sense of humor throughout, and anecdotes about where the food originated from and how it got its preposterous name. The contents of this cookbook are a treasure.

Now for the bad part: the physical book. Had the pages been printed on better quality paper, I would upgrade this poor excuse for a tome to galley status. The paper is clearly manga paper, almost (but not quite) as good as the quality of the phone book paper of your yellow pages, yet not quite as thick. The pages are transparent enough that you do not need to turn the flimsy page to see what is printed on the other side. The text size is small, the same size as the print of the listings in a phone book. The ink quality is atrocious; it's obvious that the photocopying machine used to crank out these pages was running out of toner, giving the book dark-text pages and fuzzy pale-text pages. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether the text is in bold print or if the toner cartridge went into its final death throe. The spiral spine is cheap plastic and does not allow easy page-turning. The quality of this (physical) book is absolutely ridiculous.

That's five stars for the content, one star for the physical book.

92 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a classic: two reasons to get this book, July 19, 2000

By	Mayer Goldberg (Beer Sheva, Negev Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Joy of Cooking Comb-Bound Edition: Revised and Expanded (Plastic Comb)

The Joy of Cooking is by now a classic, a Bible of cooking. An encyclopedic tome of procedures, material and recipes. I shall not attempt to cover its many virtues here, but instead I would like to focus on two reasons why you MUST get this book:

LEARNING TO COOK The Joy of Cooking is more than just a recipe book. It's a textbook. As a student, living on my own and having to take my first steps in the kitchen, this book was a life saver -- it taught me how to cook. Other cookbooks are mere collections of recipes: If you follow them carefully, you have a good chance at ending up with something close to what the author intended. But most cookbooks don't teach you anything about preparing food -- they're just recipes -- so you never really understand, for example, how different doughs are made and how they're used for different breads and pastries, or what kinds of fish should be broiled, fried or cooked, etc. The Joy of Cooking teaches you all that, and much more. If you take the time to actually read the descriptions at the start of each chapter, as opposed to just searching for and following a recipe, you will understand how to cook. The importance of this is immense: If you actually understand what your doing, as opposed to simply following directions, you can improvise, invent new recipes, correct any problems/mistakes/errors, etc. You will begin to think like a Chef. I own many cookbooks, but the Joy of Cooking is one of the very few that actually attempts (and does such a wonderful job) teaching you how to cook. You shouldn't miss up on this opportunity. It's very clear, very well-written, and is ideal for those that are taking their first steps in the kitchen.

RARE AND DIFFICULT TO FIND RECIPES While the Joy of Cooking can't contain each and every ethnic food, it is quite encyclopedic nonetheless. Often, I search dosens of cookbooks, surf the internet, ask friends, only to discover that what I'm looking for is already in the Joy of Cooking! I should have consulted it first! Do you realise that the Joy of Cooking will teach you how to make marshmellows, Halwa, Turkish pastry dough (for borekas), candy, and many other not-so-easy-to-find recipes? And all from scratch: Marshmellows are essentially whipped sugar syrup and gelatin. Halva is essentially sugar syrup and raw tehini sauce. Making Turkish pastry dough is an involved process that takes time and precision -- all the steps for which are in the Joy of Cooking. While I have all these recipes in other books as well, I have no other SINGLE book that contains them all. The Joy of Cooking is encyclopedic and diverse, its scope as far as procedures or ethnic foods are concerned is enormous. This should be your first cookbook, and unless you're looking for some really exotic procedures and recipes, it could very well be your only cookbook.

64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Original and Best, October 9, 2001

By	Christian P. Johnson (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Joy of Cooking (Hardcover)

(But don't buy the spiralbound!)

I'd been looking for the old, good, real Joy for a while, and found it in the spiral-bound format at a certain unnamed competitor of Amazon. Bought it on the spot, and almost immediately regretted it - what thin, cheap paper! It's like trying to read Kleenex. I left it at my beach share for the summer and the humidity alone made the thing swell noticeably.

Now, as for the contents: Joy is not for the contemporary "beginning cook," since microwaves have ensured that today's beginners know nothing at all about cooking (indeed, judging from some of the comments here, they barely seem to handle the concepts of "reading" or "visualizing without pictures"). The value is for the cook having both basic skills and the inclination to educate him- or herself. Irma and daughter Marion make wonderful companions, providing a strong, sympathetic editorial voice throughout. (Unlike the dreadful 1997 rip-off perpretrated by greedy, grave-robbing grandson Ethan, who consigned the actual writing over to a 40-odd-person committee - and it shows.) Especially helpful are longish sections detailing cooking processes and ingredients, which provide a cook with the wherewithal to vary recipes as needed.

The recipes themselves are mostly classics, with some for the ambitious and others that are perfectly suitable for day-to-day. A few even reflect changing diets, with lower-fat and -calorie variations, but the emphasis is definitely on standbys.

This is a book to learn with and to treasure. Just do yourself a favor and get the hard-cover!