Your favourite cookbook

iammumtoone

pandamonium wrote: »

But what about the famous Dairy one? ��

I think that would have to be mine. I don't use it much as tend to reach for one of my more recent ones, but if I could only keep one it covers everything. Plus it brings back memories from before the 'trendy' cookbooks came about. It think it might have been the first cookbook I bought.

tessie_bear

i have a green one with a tomato on its a gcse food tech book....brilliant never seen a child or me make a recipe from it that fails....also got my delia complete course my mum had one with all bits of recipes from mags and recipes from friends....i decided i needed one when i got married and was now a grown up

also love nigella as a read but get very put off by her epic list of ingredients xxx

jackyann

Well, it would of course, be my own notebooks and files stuffed with cuttings etc. with my mum's thrown in as well!
But this made me think, and I realised, with some astonishment that the one I go to most often is actually Nigella's first book How To Eat, from 1999 I think. This was before she came over all unnecessary. This book is full of basic, sensible recipes.

But the book I am most fond of is Elizabeth David's French Provincial Food. I was very fortunate in my late teens, to spend some time in France, in a family, and learned some cookery from 'grand-mere'. I had the chance to stay, and study, but I knew at my heart that I wanted to be a nurse, and I would be best to come home to train. So I did,and never regretted it. But sometimes when the days on the ward were long, and the skies were grey, I missed the sun and the scent of Southern French cooking, I would read that book, and lose myself.
Only yesterday, my original, almost 50 year old copy came down from the shelf for me to check a recipe.

Kim_kim

Ministry of food - Jamie Oliver.
It’s basic, but best :-)

esmy

My Mums collection of BeRo baking books - not sure how old the oldest is but I would guess 50 years??

Oh and my ancient battered Cranks cook book - when OH decided to become vegetarian 25 years ago it was invaluable.

Callie22

I don't like threads like this - they end up costing me money ...

I don't think I could pick a favourite cook-book as I don't really have one book that does 'everything'. I particularly like to by books by specific authors who are experts in specific things. I suppose the most general books I have are by Delia, but I'd still need to hide her 'Book of Cakes' recipes in along with her Cookery Course, if only for the Jamaican Gingerbread and the Coffee and Walnut cake with the coffee cream mousseline filling *dribbles*

Pollycat

iammumtoone wrote: »

If you could just keep one of your cookbooks, which would it be?

No cheating you are only allowed to pick one

It would have to be.......Google.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Hugh Fearnley-Posho's Veg Every Day is probably most used. Lots of useful basic stuff in there, like soup stock, passata and poached eggs, so good for a not-so-confident cook.

Mary Berry's Baking Bible is also all you ever need for cakes/biscuits. Common sense stuff like the ingredients ratios for a basic Victoria sponge for three different tin sizes (I get annoyed when recipe books assume you have a massive range of bakeware).

norfolksaver

I bought The Penguin Cookery Book by Bee Nilson on my honeymoon in 1973. I had never cooked before and I learnt from this book. I own a rather large amount of cookery books now and especially love the Hairy Bikers and Delia but if I need a recipe I can guarantee it will always be in Bee's book. It is held together by an elastic band but I could not do without it

DigForVictory

Cooking in a bedsit by Kath Whitehorn. One of the earliest printings as the revision kept it relevant but at the cost of a lot of what made it great.

Not for the recipes but for the laughs, the family references (it's been a multigenerational volume), the whole concept of Cooking To Impress as opposed to Cooking To Survive, the cheerful use of veal as it was cheap & not politically immoral at the time.

Cook book to survive with? Google. <Sorry>