Barbara's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
The 1997 Joy of Cooking
By Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker, Irma S. Rombauer
Scribner - 1997
This book is a standard reference for me and I really like the variety of recipes and cuisine. It's criticized for being chef-y, but I truly don't need the mushroom-soup type shortcuts. Recipes are clearly written and the chapter organization makes more sense to me than earlier editions.
But how I wish that they had used a better type face! Fractions are hard to read, the contrast between bold ingredients and normal instructions is not as clear as in the earlier 1975 version I have, and I very much miss the bold main headings in the index. It's such a big cookbook and such a big index, making headings and subheadings more visual would have been a great help.
And because it is so different from earlier (and later editions) I'm glad that I still have multiple editions of Joy.