Foodist: Cookbook Reviews

Best Recipe: The Best of Cook's Illustrated

By Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine

Who in their right mind would test 70 gumbo recipes to find the very best one? Or 40 versions of the peanut butter cookie? Or 80 chocolate chip cookie recipes? The short answer is Christopher Kimball and the dedicated staff he has assembled in the last 20 years at Cook's Illustrated magazine.

The routine goes like this: Pick a favorite dish that everyone in the US either wants to cook or will someday cook -- something like macaroni and cheese -- then stop taking lithium. Feel the manic obsessiveness kick in, research all pertinent recipes, cook and taste and cook and taste, take notes, compile data, winnow data, then settle on one Master recipe from which all other variants shall spring. Publish same. It has been going on like this nearly 20 years and as a result any home cook can feel assured that, given the Cook's Illustrated recipe at hand, the turkey currently in the oven will come to the table a magnificent beast begging to be caved and served and savored. And there's a lot to be said for that.

The Best Recipe represents the best of Cook's Illustrated, the greatest hits of America's most mad dog test kitchen -- 700 recipes, for those inclined to count. A spinoff of all the testing for the Master Recipe are the lists of products that come measure up to exacting standards, both food products and kitchen tools, and all of that information is included. Also, the book is packed with tips on how to achieve the result you have in mind, be that trussing a chicken or frosting a cake. Cook's Illustrated has always published the best how-to illustrations in the business, and The Best Recipe is resplendent with them.

The impatient cook can flip to the recipe for spaghetti with clam sauce and nail the dish to the table. The patient reader can go through the process of discovery and learn why the recipe works as well as it does, and how that conclusion came to be. There are chapters covering Salads, Vegetables, Pasta, Beans and Grains, Poultry, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Grilling, Stir-Fries, Stews, Fish, Pizza, Bread, Eggs, Cookies, Cakes, Fruit Desserts, Pies, and Puddings.

Master these 700 recipes and you can serve the best of mainstream American family cooking from the 20th century. And maybe, along the way, you can learn to have fun, too. It's the one ingredient that seems to be missing form these earnest pages.
Schuyler Ingle ...