General Purpose, Joy of Cooking

There have been a quite a number of excellent general purpose cookbooks published over the years, and we will try to offer them here. Two milestone books, the so-called Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and the Joy of Cooking, deserve special attention. Both are still in print in updated versions and most of the older editions are still popular. Certain editions of the Betty Crocker's Cookbook also continue to be popular.

A good history of the various editions of Joy of Cooking is on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joy_of_Cooking.

A word of caution: This category of cookbook invites passions fueled by familiarity, nostalgia and generational prejudice. We have seen mothers and daughters have words over whether the "light blue" Joy of Cooking is better than the later "white" cover edition. We have seen someone roll their eyes and argue when their mother said that The Settlement Cookbook will be found on the bookshelf of every Jewish-American household.