What's the best cookbook ever?!

That is a tough question fo a guy like me to answer. my cookbook accumulation, can't really call it a collection since it is so eclectic, runs into the hundreds of books and the pile is still growing.

But i will try.

I guess I'd have to say that any cookbook published by the Editors of Cook's Illustrated is a good candidate for that title.

Before a recipe is added to the book, the people at "America's Test Kitchen" test every ingredient, every method seven ways from Sunday. If you try one of their recipes and it fails, it is because you screwed something up. Follow their directions and every recipe is never-fail.

The cookbook I've used more than any other over the last 30 years would be The Fanny Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook. I have an old paperback edition that has been with me through two marriages and Fanny has been more faithful than either wife.

Another classic cookbook that no cook should be without is Joy of Cooking. Though in honesty it comes close to being more of a textbook than a cookbook. Mothers should make sure their daughters get one of these books for a wedding present. It might save some new husbands from being fed like gods. You know having burnt offerings put before them.

Well that's about as good as I can do. I guess I could come closer to nominating a Top 10, if counting the Cook's illustrated books as one, than to nominating a single cookbook.

Doc Hudson, the Kilted Chef

1 THE FRENCH MENU COOKBOOK Richard Olney
(Ten Speed Press, 1970)
On a summer afternoon at his home in Provence in 1999, the American food writer Richard Olney went to lie down after a light lunch, and never woke up. He was 72, and had led an interesting and fulfilling life (his friends included the writer James Baldwin, the poet John Ashbery, and the painter John Craxton). He had also, unlike many people, been able to cook his own last meal. The story goes that when his brothers arrived to arrange the funeral, they found a plate and a glass by the sink. The plate contained traces of a tomato pilaff; the glass, red wine. The remaining pilaff was in the fridge. The brothers took it out, heated it up, and toasted him before tucking in.

This pilaff tells you everything you need to know about Olney. People favour risottos now, but before there was risotto, there was pilaff: buttery rice mixed with onions, garlic and tomatoes that have first been fried in olive oil. If the tomatoes are good and fresh, the oil sufficiently grassy, and the onions just so, this is the food of the gods. Olney was a hugely accomplished and knowledgeable cook, but his mantra was simplicity and, in this sense, he was ahead of the times. When The French Menu was first published in 1970, its determinedly seasonal approach was considered revolutionary. Four years later, he published Simple French Food, and his reputation was sealed.

Some read Olney for his uncompromising style alone. His sentences are longer than a prize pike; his salads are "composed", not tossed. Others like the way he pairs every dish with a wine. But it's his menus that really slay you. Olney lived alone, but he was a generous host, and his friends must have considered themselves truly lucky. Imagine a friend who cooked you sorrel soup, followed by frito misto, pheasant salmis with ceps, and an orange jelly. Or crayfish mousse, ravioli of chicken breast, roast leg of venison and moulded coffee custard. Or, perhaps best of all, cucumber salad, baked lobster, braised and roasted partridge, and fresh figs with raspberry cream. With this raspberry cream, we quietly rest our case. Rachel Cooke

That is supposedly the best but I would prefer a Briish one of British foods and say
6 ENGLISH FOOD Jane Grigson
(Ebury Press, 1974)
The great Jane Grigson, the Observer's food writer from 1968 until her death in 1990, was also the author of many wonderful cookbooks. It's perhaps debatable which is the best of these, but the one for which she will always be most celebrated is English Food. As the critic Fay Maschler put it: "She restored pride to the subject of English food and gave evidence that there is a valid regional quality still extant in this somewhat beleaguered cuisine."

English Food (it contains recipes from Wales, too) is undoubtedly a work of scholarship: carefully researched, wide-ranging and extremely particular. But it is also contains hundreds of excellent recipes, the vast majority of them short, precise and foolproof. Who could resist poached turbot with shrimp sauce, or a properly made Cornish pasty? As for the puddings, Grigson delivers recipes for some of our favourite ever: Yorkshire curd tart, brown bread ice cream, queen of puddings, and Sussex pond pudding. There is also an excellent – and blissfully long – section on teatime: every possible cake and bun is here in all their sugary, buttery glory. Rachel Cooke

One of the most published cookbooks ever, was the Joy of Cooking. It sold over 18 million copies, and was first publicly introduced in 1936. I had an old tattered copy that eventually just got too worn out to turn the pages.