What's the worst book on cooking that you've read?

A

amanda_pennsylvania

Well-known member
The other day, I was thinking about what constitutes good food writing. My husband had read about a book called "How to Read a French Fry," which was all about the chemical process that happens when cooking. He's all about that--LOVES Alton Brown's show because Alton talks about the "how" of cooking. So I bought it for him, and proceeded to read it out loud on a car trip. Well, we almost had an accident because we practically fell asleep. It was soooooo dull. Page after page of chemical explanations. DH finally asked me to stop reading. Maybe the book got better, but I haven't ventured back in to find out. (The chemistry just wasn't there. HAR!! Couldn't resist.)

For me, I need a compelling blend of place, personal narrative, and a really good recipe.

 
I have a love/hate relationship with those spiral bound community cookbooks groups

put together. I have collected a lot of them- neat recipes but they are carelessly put together & with no editing you're likely to be in the middle of cooking something when you realize the recipe is missing crucial instructions, steps, ingredients, oven temp., pan size...the list goes on.

 
So True! but, they usually contain those nifty substitution pages that come in handy.

 
Ditto here, you can almost tell when they were written as they alway include

the passing fads such as tomato soup cake, coca cola marinades, dirt cake, gelatin concoctions, etc.

 
I targeted my collection by scouting ebay for ones from cities/regions with heavily

ethnic populations. Many of them are like having your european great grandma's handwritten cookbook. Some especially neat ones are from churches.

 
But what we consider "crucial" may have been understood (such as pan size or temp), so didn't have

to be stated. In a way, these community cookbooks are a window onto those communities (and their communally shared cooking wisdom) and a time when people -- or the women, at least -- knew how to cook by sight or instinct and didn't need today's step-by-step detailed instructions.

A lot of them end with something like "Cook until done." That drives modern, less intuitive cooks crazy (and as a cookbook editor I'd rarely accept it today), but once upon a time, everyone knew, by sight or touch, when a cake was done -- you didn't have to be told. You didn't have to be told whether to use an 8-inch or a 9-inch cake pan, you weren't paralyzed if the recipe didn't say; you didn't have to be told to preheat the oven to 350 because everyone in your universe baked cakes at 350.

 
Gaston Lenotre. His first book used references all over insted of whole recipes, used

page numbers in some cases and recipe numbers in others. Did not include all necessary info but makes me search through all references...I can't even make one of his pastries for blind baking without scouring through all the other recipes that use the basic one, just to find a baking temp.

 
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