The Joy of Your Husband Cooking
Putting the big cookbooks to the test.
Sometime after our son was born last fall, my husband said he'd extend his culinary repertoire beyond scrambled eggs and frozen tortellini and make dinner a few nights a week. This never came to fruition, and on his scheduled nights I settled for takeout burritos, or I patched together some vaguely healthy dinner.
Andrew's failure to thrive in the kitchen was partially my fault. Every time he attempted to cook, he'd lean on me as his personal culinary encyclopedia. And frankly, I can get a bit snippy when pressed with too many basic questions. I wondered if there was a better teacher out there—one with more patience and erudition. So I rounded up four thick general-interest cookbooks—and one medium-sized one—and instructed Andrew to cook a meal (an entrée, a vegetable, a starch, and a dessert) from each. He was left entirely on his own—all questions were directed to the text at hand. The pleasure of watching the husband sweat through five meals, well, that's some schadenfreude that only I can appreciate. But the experiment also revealed the underlying utility of each book—particularly for a bright, but novice, cook such as Andrew.
Methodology
Andrew and I took several factors into consideration when evaluating each book.
First, the reference quality: How many recipes does it provide? What kind of glossaries, nutritional information, or conversion charts does it offer? Are the illustrations helpful or purely decorative?
Next, the mushier but crucial category of style: Does the book have panache? Is it written in a way that motivates the neophyte chef? Is it organized well? Does it reflect the way people cook and eat today? How enticing are the recipes?
Finally, what I call "the husband test": How clearly did the recipes direct Andrew? Did the books succinctly define the terms used in the recipes? How did the resulting food taste? And crucially, would Andrew cook from the book when he wasn't helping with this experiment?
The Results
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 13th Edition, by Marion Cunningham Recipe count: Just shy of 2,000
Fannie Farmer, the original celebrity cooking teacher, released The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896; California home-cooking maven Marion Cunningham has since updated it thrice, incorporating a contemporary kitchen sensibility, some Asian and Latin flavors, microwave advice, and vegetarian options.
