Affection for My Cookbooks

I have great affection for my cookbooks for any one of a number of reasons. Here are just a few:

I love to read them and imagine the flavors of the recipes.

I love the personality of the writer that comes through in the books.

I love that they provide me with an incredible wealth of ideas that I could never come up with on my own, especially about ethnic cuisines, like Persian.

I love how beautiful some of them are and I love the gorgeous photographs, misleading as they may be.

I love to “test” a new cookbook to see if the recipes are accurate, well-conceived, and well-written. I watch out for egregious errors: 2T for 2t, for example, can cause serious damage if the ingredient is salt, chipotle chili pepper, or baking powder. But I also watch for excitingly new combinations and methods. The end result of the testing is, of course, a nice meal. Yum. Yum.

I love that they are artifacts and reflections of the culture of which I am a part. Joy of Cooking from the 50s is different from Joy of Cooking in 00s. Food fads come and go like skirt lengths. Now we’re back to fondue.

I love that over time they provide a history of my cooking experiences. Notes I have written in them over the years tell me what I fixed for Thanksgiving dinner in 1994 or how my sons, Franz and Ben, now grown, reacted to a new dish (“Yuck”), or how I changed the recipe to fix it or to suit my taste.

Do you love your cookbooks? I would love to know the ways.