If you use the standard that a few outstanding practical recipes justify
getting a cookbook, the Gourmet Cookbook (1950) abundantly delivers.
(Supplements followed its publication -- I have a small collection -- and
lately a new book under its venerable title. But this is the original
Gourmet. Quirky, ubiquitous, and at last count the dominant mention under
its name in Internet archives.) Recipes for herb-stuffed broilers, English
herb cheese, various desserts and mushroom dishes demonstrate why this is
so.
Elsewhere I've often recommended an appetizing underground classic: Louis
Pullig de Gouy's Sandwich Manual for Professionals (1939), more readily
available in the 1980s reprint, The Ultimate Sandwich Book (Philadelphia:
Running Press, 1982, ISBN 0894711636 or 0894711644). Variations on the
hamburger that are now forgotten (or "discovered"😉. 63 pages on "Club, or
Three-Decker" sandwich recipes alone, several per page. De Gouy emphasized
that the person Sandwich himself (18th-century playboy earl) is important
for naming, not inventing, it. De Gouy cited Greek, Roman, and Babylonian
taste for "a wedge of meat between two slabs of bread" but traced the modern
sandwich to a popularization by the teacher Rabbi Prince Hillel after 70 BC
with residue in symbolic Passover custom (unleavened bread with bitter herbs
and haroseth, chopped nuts and apple). "This is to prove that sandwiches are
as old as bread and cheese, and Romans and Danes and Saxons and Normans must
have eaten them from one end of England to another." (That's highly
abridged in the 1982 reprint.) Despite these publications, people continue
eagerly to mix up the inventing of sandwiches with the naming. (With
renewed vigor today via Internet, Wikipedia, etc.)
Marcella Hazan's two books that introduced much of US to northern Italian
cooking also indirectly helped spur the original Internet food forum 25
years ago. Though participants didn't dwell on that connection, they did
cite Marcella's books and "The Romagnolis' Table," whose durable pragmatic
pasta ideas I still use.
http://tinyurl.com/ynq28s
Kenneth Lo, expatriate Chinese writer, teacher, and cook, is credited as a
mentor by some US Chinese-émigré chefs. He wrote popular English-language
cookbooks in the 1970s including Chinese Regional Cooking (ISBN 0394738705,
"used and new from $1.55" recently on amazon) and Chinese Cooking on Next to
Nothing. I posted about the first title to rec.food.cooking in 1988 (some
people have copies of the posting but it's not currently in public
archives). Lo, writing mostly in England, owned and partly translated the
11-volume 1963 edition of the national cookbook (Famous Dishes of China,
Peking: Ministry of Commerce Foods and Drinks Management Department).
Eloquent evocations of China itself, attention to underlying principles and
folk recipes, condemnation of shortcuts like MSG (Lo was hardly the only
Chinese chef to disparage MSG). I have several other titles. For some
reason, some later and British editions have a different tone, and I spot
also a different view of Lo among some British readers -- would like to
understand this story better sometime.
In the late 1940s, many mainstream US cookbooks seemed bent on eradicating
savor and subtlety (in favor of canned soups and green food coloring and
"Thousand Island" salad dressing [1]). The 1943 Joy of Cooking (already a
"brand," remote from the original book) even demonstrated that it was
possible to season a cookbook full of savory dishes with exactly salt,
pepper, and paprika. Into this scene, Morrison Wood brought wine and garlic
and spices and life, remaining a minor mainstream classic for 30 years (plus
supplements and spin-offs). More, posted 1992:
http://tinyurl.com/49xl6
That's a few examples. I'd like to hear of other durable cookbooks.
--
[1] "Thousand Island" is a mayonnaise sauce appearing in US cookbooks by
1948 (de Gouy's Gold Cook Book for example, revised edition; Wood lists it
also), commonly used on lettuce salads. In original recipes it's a very
mild "Russian" dressing with further mayonnaise and whipped cream. As
discussed periodically, it sometimes appears on Reuben Sandwiches, though
some prefer the more robust classic "Russian Dressing." (If the ages of
humankind are accountable Stone, Bronze, Iron, etc., then the ages of the US
can be further subdivided. The last half of the 20th Century was the Age of
Mayonnaise.)