Sally Schneider believes in cooking healthy food, but she's not a fanatic. She uses butter and cream in moderation when they make sense in a recipe. This is a great general-purpose cookbook.

This is a compendium of Marcella Hazan's previous cookbooks. Her personality really comes through in her recipes. She is very particular about ingredients and method, but if you follow her directions, you'll always end up with a great dish.

This is another good general-purpose cookbook. Mark Bittman's style is friendly and easy to follow.

Written in 1960s when women still went to Women's Clubs in large numbers, this book contains a couple of thousand recipes from home cooks all over the country. Some are dated, but this is still a cookbook worth owning just for the variety and volume of recipes.

This cookbook combines three of Diana Kennedy's previous Mexican cookbooks. Many of the recipes are from Mexican home cooks. This cookbook explores regional Mexican cooking and techniques. It's interesting to read and a pleasure to cook with.

I borrowed this book from the library and now I want to get a copy of my own. This book was published in 1990 when the Soviet Union was still intact. This is really a Soviet cookbook, not just a Russian cookbook . There are recipes from all of the former Soviet Republics so the variety is huge. The book was originally published in hard cover.

Nathalie Dupree has clearly done a lot of entertaining. Her recipes are reliably good and her time management advice would be useful to someone who hasn't entertained much.

I got a new oven recently and I've really put this cookbook to good use. I've particularly enjoyed the recipes for roasting vegetables because I hadn't roasted anything but meat and poultry before. Barbara Kafka's cookbooks are always well done. I have several others.

This is a comprehensive soup cookbook that I always turn to first if I want make soup. The recipes are interesting and the results are tasty.

This is the cookbook I use if I want to make something really special.

This cookbook provides a broad array of German regional recipes. The desserts are especially good.

The recipes in this cookbook are always good. This isn't a comprehensive cookbook; it's just a snapshot of what was published in the Times during the '70s and early '80s, but it has some really great recipes. The version I have is hardback with dustjacket.

This relatively small book is a great reference for understanding Chinese ingredients, including spices and vegetables.