Classic Home Cooking

This is a terrific book and if you are someone starting out learning how to do home cooking, this might be the only book you ever need. I have had Joy of Cooking for a number of years and always thought it an excellent book, but really this is just as good PLUS every dish is illustrated. The recipes are clear and depend for the most part on ingredients that you can easily buy in the supermarket. All my favorite dishes that I make regularly are there--meat loaf, chicken pot pie, apple pie, Greek salad, hot and sour soup, Thai red curry, so this book really hits the spot and has inspired me to jazz up some of my recipes and to try some new dishes. I recently made the sourdough loaf, and although I have been making bread for years, I loved the result and will make it regularly, though not in quite the same way as suggested by the recipe. I have not really checked or proofread many of the recipes in detail for errors, but I did notice on the sourdough recipe that it said "12 cups white bread" when it should surely have read "12 cups white bread flour." This recipe made a two vast loaves, and one has to wonder if there were other errors in the recipe, because I had to use about 8 cups of water to mix the dough to the right consistency, rather than the 1 cup given in the recipe, and it seems to me that one would do better to cut the ingredients in half and make two decent size loaves. As the recipe stands, it is easier to mix in a paint bucket using a power drill and a mortar mixing blade than by using conventional means, rye bread dough being notoriously stiff. The book is brilliantly organized with picture indexes at the start of each chapter, and all in all I cannot speak well enough of it. The food you cook may not look quite as good, as the photos are all of food beautfully garnished and served up on plates with color schemes that match the food, but, hey, you need something to get you motivated. In the state where I live there are many restaurants that advertise themselves as having "good home cooking", but what they actually serve up is just cafeteria food. Now with this book as your guide, you can make your basic dishes like meatloaf and potatoes as real home cooking, but make them really tasty and delicious, which is how food ought to be. There are also enough recipes in every category to find new ideas when you have mastered the basics. As well as recipes there are excellent discussions of what equipment you need, various cooking techniques (like how to bone a whole chicken), all beautifully illustrated. I would say this is the best all around cook book I have seen. I should perhaps add that I am a middle aged man who lives alone and prefers to cook his own food. I make my own bread, ginger beer, ice cream, a few pies, and generally subsist on curries, stews, tacos, roasts etc.

This is a great cookbook with a lot of nice photos. I purchased this cookbook but had to return it due to the small font sizes used in the latest edition. I had difficulty reading the ingredients when standing and the book is placed on the kitchen table. I purchased the older edition instead. It has a larger font and the price was much cheaper. I compared 4 recipes from the 2 editions and noticed all the ingredients were the same.

I might as well throw out the rest of my cookbooks, because this is the one I use 99.99% of the time. The directions are explained very clearly and the book contains a wealth of recipes. It also doesn't require you to have a lot of fancy kitchen gadgets or exotic ingredients.

Classic Home Cooking is an excellent reference for both novice cooks and those with lots of experience. It is organized in an easy to follow manner, with plenty of pictures to help with presentation. I have prepared dozens of recipes from the book and all have been great. I especially enjoy the creative vegetarian dishes and the vegetable and salad sections.

I love this book! I actually checked it out in the library (and now I"m going to order it) because I was looking for specific recipes, and it contained every recipe for which I was looking-- and the recipes are great! I made the banana cream pie and found out that this recipe also makes incredible caramels. It is very easy to read, has pictures of EVERY recipe at the beginning of each chapter/type of recipe, and even I can make these recipes with great success (and I'm not yet much of a cook but everyone loved my banana cream pie!)