The raw ingredients
Our digest of cookery classics will inspire and delight in equal measure; stack your shelves then stock the pantry.
Apartamento Cookbook #2: Winter Soups
by Apartamento
This new illustrated compendium charts 16 recipes courtesy of chefs and food folk, from cookbook writer Anissa Helou to Sydney chef Mitch Orr.
apartamentomagazine.com
Betty Crocker’s Cookbook
by the Betty Crocker editors
A US staple. This 1969 bestseller boasts some 950 recipes, and as many 1970s-looking dinner spreads as you can shake a cocktail stick at.
bettycrocker.com
River Café: 30
by Ruth Rogers
Earthy and unfussy Italian fare made Ruth Rogers and the late Rose Gray’s first cookbook a hit in 1996. Now this wistful and wise title hints at how it shot to stardom.
penguinrandomhouse.com
Plenty More
by Yotam Ottolenghi
The Jerusalem-born chef is as prodigious with cookbooks as he is in his restaurants. This effort shows his mastery of Middle Eastern cookery in a riot of colour and texture.
penguinrandomhouse.com
French Provincial Cooking
by Elizabeth David
A province-by-province account of the British writer’s beloved France that’s told in witty prose, with allusions from the classical to culinary.
penguinrandomhouse.com
Larousse Gastronomique
Published first by Éditions Larousse
A culinary colossus that first thumped down on kitchen surfaces in 1938. This updated Hamlyn-published edition remains an encyclopaedic affair.
octopusbooks.co.uk
The Nordic Cookbook
by Magnus Nilsson
The hirsute Jämtlandian chef behind this timely tome started fêted restaurant Fäviken in Sweden. His rundown of Nordic nosh is definitive and authoritative.
phaidon.com
How to Be a Domestic Goddess
by Nigella Lawson
Jibes about Lawson’s lascivious manner in the kitchen are easy but faulting her recipes is harder. Expect pies, cakes and a tart or two.
penguin.co.uk
Hirams Kokbok
by Märit Huldt
What started as a charming column in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet became this jovial selection of recipes and charming line drawings. But where’s the English-language edition?
massolit.se
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
by Fannie Farmer
The 1896 gem by the former principal of the famed Boston Cooking School goes beyond most books published since when it comes to rigorous nutritional science.
crownpublishing.com
How to Cook a Wolf
by MFK Fisher
This reprint of Fisher’s 1942 classic about economising on food during wartime is a study in artful writing and rigorous research that celebrates and surprises more than it warns and forbids.
fsgbooks.com
Egg
by Blanche Vaughan
A simple subject captured by the former St John and River Café chef. Yes there’s advice on poaching and the like but beyond that there are buttery brioches and a lively lentil curry.
orionbooks.co.uk
Arabella Boxer’s Book of English Food
by Arabella Boxer
By harking back to the zenith of cookery in the interwar years, Boxer provides new reasons to be proud of roast beef and sticky toffee pudding.
penguin.co.uk
Happy Days with the Naked Chef
by Jamie Oliver
Expect Italian dishes made cheeky and chirpy, and a style that eschews the strictures and fiddly measurements of his more dour and ceremonious predecessors.
penguin.co.uk
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
by Julia Child
This California-born chef went on to forge a six-decade career on the small screen and in print. Her recipes remain fresh and the prose remains crisp.
penguinrandomhouse.com
The Moosewood Cookbook
by Mollie Katzen
Veggie cookery books can be a little worthy but the roots of the movement extend back to Katzen’s self-illustrated 1970s gem. Hearty rather than abstemious.
tenspeed.com
Chez Panisse Café Cookbook
by Alice Waters
Simple dishes can change the culinary landscape but when Waters and pals started Chez Panisse in 1971, they couldn’t have known the impact their food would have.
harpercollins.com
La Cucina Futurista
by FT Marinetti
This isn’t an entirely serious entry – more of a warning. It’s a quirky historical throwback that sounds scarily similar to some of today’s micro-gastronomic ballyhoo.
ibs.it
The Complete Nose to Tail
by Fergus Henderson
To throw away any part of animal is, says Henderson, “disingenuous”. Meat is a precious thing and here’s how to make the most of it.
bloomsbury.com
Cooking in Ten Minutes
by Édouard de Pomiane
Back in 1948, De Pomiane sensed a tide change: haute cuisine should be available to the masses. A reminder that good food needn’t be spoken of in earnest.
global.oup.com
Jane Grigson’s Fish Book
by Jane Grigson
Grigson’s culinary legacy can be consumed in bite-sized editions on specific subjects. Here it’s fish but fruit, vegetables and mushrooms are a few of the other options.
penguin.com
The Silver Spoon
by Editoriale Domus
There’s plenty to say about Italian food but very little that hasn’t been explored in this vast tome. In essence it defines the ineffable conviviality that gives Italian fare its pizzazz.
phaidon.com
Grandmothers’ Happy Recipes
by Yu Nakamura
Yes it’s in Japanese and no it’s not a bestseller but the author’s rather lovely mission was to glean recipes from grandmothers she met while travelling the world.
kirakusha.com
My Favourite Recipes
by Ellice Handy
This Handy little edition – a mix of Malay specialities and European classics made easy – is a mainstay of Southeast Asian bookshelves.
penguinrandomhouse.com
Basics to Brilliance
by Donna Hay
Hay captures something of her native Australia’s plum produce and flattering light in her sun-kissed and colourful catalogue of culinary concoctions.
harpercollins.com
