do you use your older cookbooks, or your more recent ones, more?

caroline1973lefty

I ask because the other day i realised that the cookbook i use more than any other, by miles, is...

the first cookbook i ever bought! (it's "The Students Cookbook" by Jenny Baker)

I turn to it time and time again, always finding the recipe i'm looking for in the index after failing to find it in most of my other cookbooks. Which made me think about how much money i could have saved on cookbooks, if i'd known! :rotfl:

I was wondering - hope this makes sense - is it BECAUSE it was the first cookbook i'd ever bought, that i still use it so much - ie because it ended up influencing my cooking style hugely? Or did i just happen to choose a particularly good first cookbook?

So i thought i'd ask - does anyone else also use mostly their oldest cookbooks? Or is it your more recent acquisitions you couldn't live without?

(There's only 2 of my more recent acquisitions i'd really miss - 'How to Eat' by Nigella Lawson and my newish copy of 'English Food' by Jane Grigson. Neither are as useful as my first little treasured cookbook but they are nice reads!)

ifonlyitwaseasier

i tend to use the dairy home cookbook and delias complete collection more than the rest but thats due to some of the basic recipes in there being handy for several things.

i do use my chinese and indian books when i need to (ching he huan's two books are fab!!) and i have the obligatory jamie oliver/nigella collections, which i do use for some of the recipes more than others.

oh and i have an old jewish cookbook my gran gave my mum which i found being reprinted so grabbed a copy! i'll look out the name of it in a mo, it has some amazing recipes!

thriftlady_2

I've owned and discarded so many cookbooks in my lifetime that it is now hard to know which was my first. I think one of my oldest books must be Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake book which I've had for years and is falling apart. I used just today for gingerbread.

It would be fair to say that I use my older books more than my newer one.

Can I recommend you another book? If you like Jenny Baker and Jane Grigson's English Food (which I have also) then you must try Jenny Baker's Kettle Broth to Gooseberry Fool -a Celebration of Simple English Cooking. I've had it for ages and use it a lot.

Jasper27_2

I often use my Be-Ro baking book, my copy is over 20 years old but it's been going a lot longer than that. It covers all the basics of baking and proper british puddings and I wouldn't be without it.

ariba10

Of all the cook books we have.

Sainsbury's "The Cooks Companion" by Josceline Dimbleby (Bought 17 years ago) is by far the most used.

beemuzed

My all time favourite is an edition of Good Housekeeping given to me as an engagement present in 1968 by my favourite aunt. I'd never done much cooking before, and in the two years before we married (I was still at college) I read it from cover to cover..and thus was born a passion for recipe books! I have two long shelves up in my kitchen, tightly packed with cookbooks. Many of them I only use for one or two items, but I can't bear to part with them. Most are old friends by now, but new friends like Jamie Oliver and Nigella are there too.

Triker

must.................

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look........................

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amazon...........I.......................can................resist.............:rotfl:


Really like all my books, not even read some, like the old ones, and Nigella and Jamie, really like Nigel Slater, and the Dairy one, and the farmhouse one *wanders off to look at extensive collection of books and not to look on amazon;)*

thriftlady_2

Ooh, I love Nigel Slater. I clearly remember buying his first bestseller 'Real Fast Food' back in 1992 and using it alot. It isn't really geared at families though, and I have more time to cook now so don't use it much. I have a signed copy of Real Cooking.

I have most of Nigella's too but I only use a few recipes and I've adapted those to my own tastes. I love her writing though.

I used to be ruthless about cookbooks I didn't actually cook from, and I'd give a lot away to Oxfam. Then I'd regret it and sometimes end up rebuying them:o how moneysaving-not. Now, though I keep them and enjoy reading them just for the pleasure of reading about food. I think you absorb a lot of culinary knowledge just by reading a book whether you follow a recipe from it or not.

ariba10

Most of our cook books come from charity shops.

Can't resist them, you see handwritten notes on some and it makes you wonder, who? and when?

kittyscarlett

The older books, for certain. I don't own a single Nigella or Jamie Oliver, not keen on either of them, but my newer books are all HFW. Apart from that, Gervase Markham anyone ? Ahem, ok, that's not what you mean by older books

I am definitely of the read and absorb school rather than the follow a recipe rigidly one. The Paupers Cookbook by Jocasta Innes, Food in England by Dorothy Hartley, the classic Farmhouse Fare ( 1970's edition but with all the recipes from the previous 4-5 decades included ) European Peasant Cookery by Elisabeth Luard, these are my Desert Island cookery books and I'd hate to be without them.

Hawthorn

My most used cookbooks. Well, I have a Bero book. My original one was I think from the 1960s, and I got given an Atora one possibly? That was ancient, from the 1920's? It's a while ago now, but both of those got left when I left my first husband
I have since repurchased the Bero cookbook.
I own good housekeeping, Farmhouse kitchen, marguerite patten, but to be honest, as good as they are I rarely use them. I don't follow recipes much for savoury food....baking, yes, but not for meals. I make it up as I go along LOL.