Product Description
Joy is the all-purpose cookbook. There are other basic cookbooks on the market, and there are fine specialty cookbooks, but no other cookbook includes such a complete range of recipes in every category: everyday, classic, foreign and de luxe. Joy is the one indispensable cookbook, a boon to the beginner, treasure for the experienced cook, the foundation of many a happy kitchen and many a happy home. Privately printed in 1931, Joy has always been family affair, and … More >>
Tags: Cooking
Found recipes dated, layout makes it difficult to use and although some of the how-to is useful, its generally from another era. Bought Gourmet cook book instead.
Rating: 1 / 5
If you want bad gourmet recipes, then this is your book. The basic information is poor at best, and the “fancy” gourmet recipes are not even good. When I begin to cook a meal, i’ll look in the “joy of cooking”, get disappointed, and go and find what I want on the internet. The recipes are what you would expect to eat in the early 20th century. This book should have stayed there. I’m sure your grandma loves it though! squid in ink sauce?! for real? c’mon!
Rating: 1 / 5
If you want recipes for old fashioned candy and such, this is a good reference. However recipes have changed radically in the last decade so the use of butter as a main ingredient has gone down in favor. Also classic American cooking tends to be fattening and bland. New cookbooks use fresh ingredients and different methods of adding flavor besides using butter and flour. However the art of candy making and canning is not as prevelant, so I find this book useful for those aspects. Unless you are a triathelete though, I wouldn’t want to live on the recipes here. American cuisine has come a long way and the classic Joy of Cooking demonstrates that to a tee.
Rating: 4 / 5
I received this book as a wedding gift 20 years ago which is the only reason I still have it. Although there is good information to be found on a variety of foods I can’t think of how many times I might need to know how to clean and cook a turtle or any of the other creatures they seem to think are edible. It is very entertaining to read about these things and that is why I give it three stars. If you just want a plain old recipie you probably won’t find it here.
Rating: 3 / 5
My mother and grandmother and aunts have raved about this cookbook since the original version was published…they call it their cooking “bible” and they love to give it to people for graduation or wedding gifts so that they’ll be equipped with every thing they need to know to start cooking. In my opinion, it gives a whole new meaning to “too much information.” In the age of the internet where you can google any cooking questions you have and get good answers, why should you need to own a hard-copy of a bicep-building beyond-thorough cooking encyclopedia that’s not even user-friendly in it’s format with wordy disertation-type recipes with references to other pages and the ingredient listings spread throughout each recipe? As far as the recipes go, they’ve included every recipe ever invented just in case you get a hankering for making something (like homeade marshmellows). I’m a southern woman and I like healthy, fast, easy, delicious, fun-to-cook, easy-to-follow, short on words and long on flavor recipes that make family and friends say, “WOW, you sure can cook,” and this is NOT my source for that. I’ve got a love for cooking in my genes, but am too modern to have aquired the love for this cookbook that has historically been in my family.
Rating: 2 / 5