Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138483 in Books
• Published on: 1980-09-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 877 pages

Customer Reviews

A little bit of Americana
This is not the best cookbook I have on my shelves, but I wouldn't want to give it up. I love to read this cookbook and learn how my ancestors prepared their food. There are many recipes presented as they were originally written with measurements offered in non-standard methods, for example as, "a teacup full". There are some surprising omissions, but all in all, it is a good cookbook.

An absolute necessity
One of the 3 basic cookbooks (Joy of Cooking, Better Homes & Gardens) you must have. Check out the blue cheese burger... worth the price. This goes out of print from time to time, so get it now.

OK, But Not Great
According to the editorial material, this is Mr. Beard's definitive cookbook. He is a culinary journalist of the highest caliber, and this is his penultimate collection of recipes gathered over multiple decades of culinary journalism. While it might be an impressive compendium of recipes, it is no better than many other cookbooks of similar intention. It is an interesting historical document, but is also a rather mediocre culinary resource, despite its distinguished pedigree. Considering the author's celebrity status, I was rather under whelmed by this cookbook. I do recommend it, but not enthusiastically. It does function as an all-purpose cookbook for today's typical home cook, but you can do better.
La Cuisine: Secrets of Modern French Cooking
The gold cook book
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook: AnniversaryThe Joy of Cooking Standard Edition: The All-Purpose Cookbook (Plume)
Selected Recipes from the Saturday Evening Post: All-American Cookbook
American Heritage Cookbook
New Cook Book (Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbooks)
The Good Housekeeping Cookbook

There are 2 distinct aspects to this cookbook. Over time, it has been widely hailed as important cultural anthropology. It is also an extensive compendium of home cooking. Neither aspect is especially convincing, but together, they make a decent culinary resource. Its main strength: for those who like to 'entertain at home' (OK, this an archaic term also from the era of the 'housewife'; by this, read: superbowl sunday, sunday dinner with the neighbors, baby showers, cocktail/diner parties, celebrations where food is expected, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother's/Father's day, etc.), and you need a source for reliable, decent recipes that will feed a crowd.

The recipes themselves are the weak point of this book. Mr. Beard has openly cribbed recipes from far and wide, and expertly assembled them as the good journalist that he is. He has a tendency to present several recipes that are only marginally different. This is a good sign, inasmuch as this indicates that the author has significantly altered the original recipe to fit a mold that he knows works correctly, and it also indicates that the author has tested it or a similar recipe (`authentic' is not one of the words I would use to describe the recipes). On the bad side, it means that the scope of the recipes is not as comprehensive as you might think by counting recipes or pages. There are substantial gaps, including entire categories of recipes you would normally expect to find in such an all-purpose cookbook. It also means that much of the original techniques in the recipes have been filtered through Mr. Beard's au courant (circa 1970) sensibilities. I am also not convinced that ALL of the recipes have been thoroughly tested by Mr. Beard.

I also note a couple of format deficiencies. The recipes do not specify the yield; you have to read the recipes closely to discern how many servings the recipe makes. The TOC of this book is woefully inadequate: it simply lists the chapter title. The chapters are thoughtfully divided into sections and subsections, but these are not listed in the TOC. You are more or less obligated to leaf through an entire chapter, which can be 100 pages long, to find something specific, or try your luck prospecting in the index.

The copyright of this book is 1972. It is mainly a collection of recipes of `home cooking' from the 50's and 60's. During this period, all females were `housewives', who did not go to work but instead got married, stayed at home, cooked, cleaned, and raised children. On the good side, the typical `housewife' had acquired substantial cooking abilities (not unlike the abilities expected of a newbie line cook applying for a job in a smallish restaurant) much superior to today's household, regardless of sex. There are many such collections of recipes, and Mr. Beard's effort is only fair to middling when compared to the competition. On the down side, this book has its share of recipes that are incomplete or vague, requiring the experienced touch of a `housewife' to make the recipe work correctly.

On the good side, this book is a valuable source of culinary anthropology, and it is this aspect that has made this cookbook justly famous. Throughout the book, Mr. Beard regales the reader with stories of what Americans ate, why they ate it, and how they prepared it. While this may be important to a writer or culinary journalist, it is at best an amusing anecdote for the typical home cook.