If like me, you've woken up today to the startling realization that it's December 1st and there are only 24 shopping days until Christmas, then you, too, are madly trying to come up with something you might buy for your loved ones that doesn't involve a trip to the mall. Here's my brainstorm:
Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. Because everybody with a kitchen ? and without a personal chef ? should own a copy of what the
New York Times calls "the Swiss Army Knife of Cookbooks.
What they shouldn't own is the disastrously tarted-up 1997 revision of Joy, whose editors, in an unforgivable act of gentrification, deleted the recipes for fricasseeing squirrel and porcupine. I also don't recommend the newly released 75th anniversary edition. Somehow, the editors of this version have made Irma Rombauer's earnestly kitschy advice sound ironic. And one thing Mrs. Rombauer never was, was ironic.
The best edition to give (and own) is the one from 1975, which, while at least acknowledging the invention of the microwave, still contains advice on how to prepare opossum for the skillet ("If possible, trap 'possum and feed it on milk and cereals for 10 days before killing"), as well as recipes for Donna Reed-style appetizers like Nut Cheese Balls. If you can't get your hands on a nice-looking 1975 edition, an older version of the book will do.
The first Joy of Cooking I ever cooked out of was from 1946. This copy lived at the mountain cabin that belonged to friends of mine, and had been in the library of their grandmother, Eloise. When we opened the book, we discovered Eloise's "To Do" list tucked in its pages ? a list which included such 1940s-type errands as "Repair pearls." It was the middle of a scorching July, and we had bought too many peaches at a stand on the way up, and it seemed like a very good idea to make ice cream. But while the cabin's knotty pine shelves held plenty of modern cookbooks, all their ice cream recipes seemed to contain some esoteric ingredient, like rosewater or Dragonwell tea. What we wanted was good, old-fashioned peach ice cream. And that's exactly what we found in Eloise's book.
The following summer at the cabin, we picked too many blackberries, and I was seized by an uncommonly domestic desire to bake my first pie. Turning again to Eloise's copy of Joy, I found a recipe for Basic Pie Dough, the ingredients of which included "leaf lard" (the fat found around a hog's abdomen and kidneys). Fortunately, Ms. Rombauer assured me that leaf lard could successfully be replaced with Crisco. Luckier still, she provided two pages of instruction ? will illustrations ? on the mixing, rolling, and cutting of pie dough. When my blackberry pie came out of the oven, purply syrup bubbling up through the evenly latticed top, it was a Martha Stewart moment.
So here's my advice for the first of December: Leave the mall to the desperate parents fighting over the last PS3, and spend your afternoon searching the Powell's website for an old edition of Joy of Cooking. Tomorrow, visit your local thrift store or Goodwill, and pick up an inexpensive ice cream maker. (I prefer the ones you crank by hand: the ice cream is smoother, and you can convince yourself you've pre-spent the calories.) Wrap up the ice cream maker and the old copy of Joy of Cooking, and give them both to the most loved ones on your list. Then, sometime next July, show up with a box of peaches, and remind them that the recipe for peach ice cream is on page 760.
(Note: if the loved one on your list already owns a copy of Joy of Cooking, she is probably your mother, your aunt, or your grandmother. In that case, you might want to consider giving her a copy of Mary instead. It has nearly as many pages, and goes just as nicely with the ice cream maker.)
I'd love to hear your ideas about the old (and new) cookbooks you think everybody should own. You can post them here, or contact me through my website. Thanks for a fun week!