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Joy of Cooking
Books: CookBooks: Joy of Cooking: Item 4
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Joy of Cookingby Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker
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168 of 172 people found the following review helpful: Contents excellent, book quality horrid, March 21, 2001 Reviewer:KaguyaHime (Fomalhaut) - 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.
Product 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.
Product 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 listthe 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.
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