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Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking is great. It can’t be your only cookbook—-the amount of butter will literally kill you—-and some of the recip

Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking is great. It can’t be your only cookbook—-the amount of butter will literally kill you—-and some of the recipes area bit dated (so many aspics!). However, the first part of the book focuses on techniques: chop an onion, roll an omelet, etc. The other part I like is how it demonstrates that you can “fork” a master recipe into many different dishes by swapping out sets of ingredients. A lot of other cookbooks disguise the fact that most recipes are variations on a theme, and understanding that makes it easier to improvise with whatever you have left in the fridge.

denton-scratch 5y ago
"the amount of butter will literally kill you" Abuse of the term "literally". Many recipes, especially classic french recipes, benefit from butter. It may be bad for your health, but it sure makes for nice sauces. Julia Child is fun, because of all the background she gives for her recipes. She's an engaging writer. My mother had a copy of Le Guide Culinaire by Escoffier (in english translation). It's a recipe book for pro chefs; many of the recipes are just one paragraph - you're supposed to know what "make a roux" means. My mum was not a great cook - I have no idea what she was doing with a book on Cordon Bleu cooking on her kitchen shelf.