The 100 Best Cookbooks of All Time

By Irma S. Rombauer

Since its debut in 1930, versions of this tome have earned a permanent spot in many kitchens. It was never become irrelevant. Despite its oddball recipe format, this book is an encyclopedic source for techniques, and U.S. culinary history if one has all of the versions.

Buy It: $20.55; amazon.com

By Cara Mangini

Our markets are more likely than ever to be filled with unfamiliar produce. We can’t eat it if we don’t know what to do with it. This demystifies much of the process.

Buy It: $20.36; amazon.com

By Deborah Madison

This book took vegetarian cooking from the fringe to the center of the table, even for committed carnivores. This is beautiful food that just happens to be meatless.

Buy It: $30; amazon.com

By Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosse

This book changed the cooking habits and culinary perspective of a generation when it came to entertaining. Starting with its release 1982, some cooks wonder what they served to guests before the discovered the iconic Chicken Marbella.

Buy It: $18.36; amazon.com

By Fannie Merritt Farmer

The original was published in 1896 as The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book and was the first in the country to use standardized measurements, a breakthrough that changed how all recipes are written. Marion Cunningham’s revision for the modern era, however, is the version that most people cherish and continue to use regularly.

Buy It: $37.50; amazon.com

By Pam Anderson

The author is famous for her well-crafted recipes, which is why this book is so successful in teaching cooks the fundamentals behind a dish. Sometimes we need a recipe, but sometimes we need to know how to just get in there and cook with confidence.

Buy It: $16.02; amazon.com

By Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck

One could argue it’s the most famous American cookbook, despite being a deep exploration of French cuisine. Then again, one could argue that French techniques are what taught much of the world to cook. The recipes are secondary to Julia’s exuberant messages of encouragement and empowerment to home cooks: celebrate the successes, laugh off the rest, and have fun with it all. She didn’t want for us to cook French so much as just cook, with confidence.

Buy It: $30.99; amazon.com

By Craig Claiborne

This book was among the first to show that American cooking is broad, inclusive, and evolving. The recipes reflect the editorial point of view that Craig Claiborne formed and reshaped during his reign at NYT. The recipes came from all over, but each had to meet the rigors of the paper’s test kitchen before the appeared in print.

Buy It: $22.64; amazon.com

By Mark Bittman

The title is ludicrous because no book can be about everything, but it reveals the intention of the author to simplify and streamline cooking to the point that almost anyone is willing to give it a go.

Buy It: $25.92; amazon.com

By Alice Waters

Alice Waters is often credited with launching what we now call the farm-to-table movement. Whether that is true is not the point; instead we can agree that she made many cooks and eaters more aware and appreciative of local, seasonal, organic ingredients.

Buy It: $20.50; amazon.com

By Julia Child and Jacque Pepin

This book shows that there is more than one way to be a brilliant cook, so long as one relies on fundamental techniques. A passion for cooking and a healthy dose of joie de vivre help, too.

Buy It: $15; amazon.com

By Dorie Greenspan

Packed with recipes and wisdom, Dorie Greenspan is unmatched in her ability to deliver hard-core baking lessons in friendly, accessible language. Her recipes and instructions add up to be a master class in baking.

Buy It: $27.13; amazon.com

By Dorie Greenspan

This time the inimitable Dorie Greenspan focuses her endless expertise on the beloved cookie. One cannot prepare one of her recipes and not be a better baker for it.

Buy It: $23.79; amazon.com

By Marian Morash

Packed with upwards of 800 recipes, this book is one part gardening guide and one part cookbook. A book devoted to growing and preparing fresh produce was almost anachronistic when it debuted in 1982, a time when few people were growing a garden unless they had no alternative, but in these days of farmers’ markets and CSA boxes, it’s still a wellspring of useful info.

Buy It: $43.89; amazon.com

By Molly Wizenberg

This memoir with recipes was among the first books produced by a blogging pioneer that developed a huge online audience. The recipes feel like those you’d get from a good friend who’s not afraid to dish.

Buy It: $9.12; amazon.com

By Marion Cunningham

Few cookbook authors knew more about simple and satisfying home cooking. That’s because she was a true cook who wanted her readers to be cooks as well. This book is devoted to breakfast food that would be welcomed any time of day, especially her perfect yeasted waffle.

Buy It: $16.74; amazon.com

By Marion Cunningham

Not all of the recipes are truly lost, of course, but they are timeless and delicious, so we need to cook them to ensure they never disappear.

Buy It: $16.94; amazon.com

By Anne Byrne

The brilliance of this book is that Anne Byrne recognized that many home cooks wanted to take advantage of the ease and reliability of a packaged cake mix and upgrade it by doctoring it with personal touches that made the final creation feel and taste homemade.

Buy It: $10.22; amazon.com

By Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton

This book celebration the specificity and pickiness that leads to simplicity. Simple doesn’t always mean quick or easy, but when done well, it’s the most delicious and satisfying type of dish a cook of any skill level can create.

Buy It: $23.60; amazon.com

By Tamar Adler

This cookbook is about how to use part of yesterday’s meal to create today’s. It’s a delicious ode to the deliberate leftover.

Buy It: $42.19; amazon.com

By Dori Sanders

This fourth-generation South Carolina farmer is also the author of acclaimed novels. All of her works, including this collection of her family recipes, express her sense of place and how to make the most of what one has at hand.

Buy It: $17.56; amazon.com

By Mildred Council

Mrs. Council, affectionately known as Mama Dip, is the tour de force behind the iconic Mama Dip’s Kitchen near the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. These recipes are home cooking at its unapologetic finest, designed to fill up and satisfy hungry people.

Buy It: $13.68; amazon.com

By Melissa Clark

Melissa Clark develops recipes and cranks out cookbooks and newspaper columns at an astonishing rate, yet her recipes always seem sincere, as though she really did serve these dishes to her family last night. It’s wise to trust a busy cook to share information on how to find time to cook despite a hectic schedule.

Buy It: $24.50; amazon.com

By Stella Parks

This cookbook will join the ranks of the timeless and transformative. Stella Park’s knowledge is formidable and her baked goods are brilliant, exactly the type of things we crave.

Buy It: $26.43; amazon.com

By Deb Perelman

This pioneer of food blogging knows her way around a stove, not only a keyboard. She's a very good cook, which is not always the case with bloggers. The book feels friendly, happy, and fun.

Buy It: $26.71; amazon.com

By Julia Turshen

Sometimes a cookbook becomes famous because of a single recipe, such as Julia Tershen’s raspberry jam buns, but one would be wise to cook all of these recipes designed to help cooks, especially novices, get over the barrier of intimidation.

Buy It: $23.79; amazon.com

By James Beard

James Beard has been called superlatives such as “The Father of American Cuisine” and “The King of Gourmets”. This might be his personal encyclopedia, featuring more than 1500 of his favorite recipes that trace that arc of American culinary history from the everyday to the obscure. He was among the first food journalists to argue that American had its own cuisine that was derivative of the old countries.

Buy It: $20.07; amazon.com

By Peg Bracken

Her honesty is refreshing. She might have hated to cook, but she could. Even if one never makes a single recipe, this book is a treasure for her trenchant observations and way with words.

Buy It: $16.99; amazon.com

By Laurie Colwin

Almost everyone who reads a Laurie Colwin cookbook is certain that she’d be among our BFFs. She shares recipes and tips, and is candid and endlessly charming in her confessions about her successes and failures in the kitchen and in her life.

Buy It: $11.16; amazon.com

By Laurie Colwin

Laurie Colwin loved cooking for herself and for anyone who wanted a seat at her table. These essays celebrate overlooked ingredients and underappreciated points of generosity made possible only by sharing good food with good companions. Each page is delightful.

Buy It: $14.53; amazon.com

By Ina Garten

It’s the book that launched her empire. Unlike many so-called celebrity cookbooks, this one is filed with recipes that actually work that produce food we actually want to eat. This is among the cookbooks that changed how we think about cookbook photography.

Buy It: $19.76; amazon.com

By Betty Crocker

This was the first cookbook for many a baby boomer. Released in 1957, the premise was that basic cooking skills were essential life skills for both boys and girls. It’s a refreshing look back at a time when children were fed actual food instead of not-always-so-happy meals.

Buy It: $12.79; amazon.com

By Betty Crocker

There have been a series of releases and revisions of Big Red, but the focus remains on useful recipes for scratch cooking, even as our notion of scratch has changed over the years to take advantage of jump starts and short cuts from convenience products.

Buy It: $15.42; amazon.com

The red and white gingham cover is recognizable to generations of cooks and was often the only cookbook a new bride would consult in an era when marriage often turned young women into housewives responsible for all meal preparation. There have been more than 15 revisions and updates over the years to keep up with the times, but it remains a tried-and-true resource in many households.

Buy It: $23.75; amazon.com

By Susan Westmoreland

Like most essential American cookbooks, the books from Good Housekeeping have been revised multiple times, although one could make a case that the 2001 version is the most useful because it includes instructive illustrations that promise to guide cooks to success if they follow the diagrams.

Buy It: $14.97; amazon.com

This 1987 book is among the big tomes from big title magazines. It offers a big snapshot and time stamp of the range of recipes produced by Southern Living in their first 20 years. Although no book can be everything to all people, this one came pretty close for the magazine’s devotees.

Buy It: $30.95; amazon.com

By Southern Living

This book looks dull by modern standards, but it remains a delightful compendium for cooks seeking to recreate old family recipes.

Buy It: $13.41; amazon.com

By Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso

It’s true that the types of recipes and techniques considered basic evolve over time, but cooks never stops seeking instruction in the indispensable information, whether it’s as elemental as boiling an egg or as advanced as molding a terrine. Good information is always a good idea.

Buy It: $15.98; amazon.com

By Frank Stitt

Gorgeous, story-driven cookbooks by acclaimed Southern chefs are nearly commonplace these days, but this book was among the first and remains among the best.

Buy It: $24.01; amazon.com

By Bill Smith

Come for the recipes, stay for the stories. There are no photographs, but Bill Smith’s writing richly illustrates each page.

Buy It: $14.93; amazon.com

By Edna Lewis

No scholar of American cooking, much as African-American cooking, can do without this book. Her voice and her recipes are illuminating, and this book is her magnum opus, her love letter to what it means to truly taste beloved food.

Buy It: $17.46; amazon.com

By Edna Lewis

Every word and recipe from Edna Lewis is a lesson in finesse.

Buy It: $12.21; amazon.com

By Pamela Strobel

Based on the food she prepared in her 12-seat soul food restaurant in the 1960s, this book captures some of what is takes for a recipe to have soul. The book languished in obscurity until a recent revamp and re-release from The Lee Bros. that will introduce her words and culinary repertoire to new generations.

Buy It: $20.40; amazon.com

by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

There are no finer renditions of certain classic Southern recipes than those found in this book.

Buy It: $21.25; amazon.com

By John Egerton

Many credit John Egerton with having the audacity to assert that Southern was a cuisine at all, much less one that forms the bedrock of what would come to be called American cuisine. This book is part history, part travelogue, part oral history, and part cookbook. These parts add up to a book that strives with all its might to capture and convey what it means and how it feels to eat like a Southerner.

Buy It: $28.22; amazon.com

By Judith Jones

Beyond being the editor of some of the most influential cookbooks ever published, Judith Jones was a talented cook and writer in her own right. In this book she describes the necessity of cooking real meals as a source of joy and sustenance, even when dining alone.

Buy It: $8.45; amazon.com

By King Arthur Flour

Many people pick up a sack of King Arthur flour when it’s time to bake, but it’s a good idea to turn to KAF when seeking recipes so thoroughly tested that they are practically foolproof.

Buy It: $21.81; amazon.com

By Molly Stevens

Noted cooking teacher and food writer Molly Stevens shares her deep knowledge of this essential cooking technique through her precise language in 150 recipes. There are many books on baking, and now there’s a classic on roasting.

Buy It: $24.03; amazon.com

By Molly Stevens

Master cooking teacher Molly Stevens coaches home cooks on the hows and why of a timeless and universal cooking technique. Using this book feels like having a private cooking tutorial from an expert.

Buy It: $21.48; amazon.com

By Rose Levy Beranbaum

This author was among the first to boldly use the world bible to describe the scope of a book’s contents. The recipes look complicated because of their level of detail, but that actually makes them easier to use because little is left to chance. As popular today as it was when it debuted and turned home baking on its ear – in a good way – this book still holds true.

Buy It: $19.99; amazon.com

By Rick Bayless

This book was what introduced many home cooks to the revelation that Mexican food is diverse, nuanced, and quite unlike what one gets in most Americanized eateries in shopping centers.

Buy It: $12.32; amazon.com

By Paul Bertolli

The author’s passion for Italian cooking shines on every page, including lessons on ingredients (such as aged balsamic) and techniques (such as homemade salumi) that might seem ordinary today, but were cutting edge at the time.

Buy It: $32; amazon.com

By Judy Rodgers

They say that the measure of a chef’s mettle is his or her ability to roast a chicken. If that’s true, then no one measured higher than Judy Rodgers. There are plenty of worthy recipes in this book, but the legendary roast chicken and warm bread salad top the list. It’s timeless, not quick.

Buy It: $24.65; amazon.com

By Mollie Katzen.

Mollie Katzen made vegetarian food seem less weird and more charming and appealing. Anyone who creates a cookbook by hand-lettering and illustrating each page is a dedicated author.

Buy It: $27.88; amazon.com

By Nathalie Dupree

She is a prolific author, but this book reflects the years she cooked on TV when few people were talking about Southern food at all, much less preparing it in a TV series.

Buy It: $16.66; amazon.com

By Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart

This is a huge work that touches on nearly every aspect of classic Southern cooking through 600 recipes.

Buy It: $27.49; amazon.com

By Jean Anderson

One can trust Jean Anderson to create well-researched and written cookbooks on any topic. She documents the gems often missed by other food writers.

Buy It: $8.98; amazon.com

By Jean Anderson

This informative cookbook interweaves engaging history and factoids among great recipes.

Buy It: $19.49; amazon.com

By Mrs. Simon Kander and Mrs. Henry Schoenfeld

This book was created in 1903 to serve as a cooking and homemaking primer for newly arrived immigrants. The back-to-basics recipes might seem old-fashioned, but many of them still suit today’s busy lifestyles.

Buy It: $16.95; amazon.com

By Shirley Corriher

This is a solid reference book presented under the guise of an amiable cookbook. Few people know more about the science of cooking than Shirley Corriher. She not only knows her stuff, she knows how to explain it to the rest of us.

Buy It: $8.95; amazon.com

By Kate McDermott

There might not be a more useful and inspiring book on pie making. It’s new and already a classic.

Buy It: $23.79; amazon.com

Some of the recipes are odd, yet others are as good as you’ll find anywhere, but the power of this book is its acknowledgment that the community of all Southern cooks, even those who live outside the region or are new to this country, conspire to continually create what we call Southern food.

Buy It: $19.22; amazon.com

By Peter Reinhart

Peter Reinhart is regarded by both home bakers and fellow professionals as a foremost expert on bread technique.

Buy It: $11.31; amazon.com

By Ken Forkish

His recipe for a no-knead loaf baked in a Dutch oven to approximate a professional oven is the recipe that convinced many reluctant home bakers that they could, indeed, make good bread and pizza.

Buy It: $26.95; amazon.com

By Maida Heatter

This is an advanced course in making classic desserts from an author who penned nine books of the subject and was inducted in the James Beard Hall of Fame.

Buy It: $7.56; amazon.com