What's on Your "Reference" Shelf?

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
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I guess in 2024, I shouldn’t presume anyone else keeps any bound volumes, previously known as books. I still do, and I keep a small number in my kitchens for easy reference–not for recipes.

Does anyone else do this? If so, what titles do you keep? Right now, I have in this kitchen:

Sauces, by James Peterson
On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee
Larousse Gastronomique
The Penguin Companion to Food
Fish & Shellfish by James Peterson
Oxford Companion to Wine
How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
Stillroom Cookery by Grace Firth
A tome on sausage-making, just discovered to be ex libris.

Is there a reference book you’re lusting after?

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On the Maillard post, we endorsed Messrs. McGee and Parsons.

As for McGee’s cred, we’ve long said that for us, cooking is (often improvisational) chem lab you can eat.

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Harold’s a national treasure.

4

Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman, is very useful. How much cornstarch and water to make a slurry ? One part each. Roux? 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat. How much roux to thicken? 10 parts liquid, 1 part roux. Etc.

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5

I’ll never use the entire volume but the sheer number of useful tips keeps this work of intense research handy.

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6

I try not to buy many bound books. I see myself as “on the wagon” for the most part, with a few relapses, mostly on Kindle (and thank you for reminding me to look at it);

Brown Sugar Kitchen
Plenty (Ottolenghi)
Recipe Tin Eats Dinner
Every Grain of Rice
Grains For Every Season
Cool Beans
The Flavor Equation
Kitchen Matrix
This Will Make It Taste Good
Istanbul and Beyond

On the shelf, pretty much the same as this picture from this thread four years ago

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I noticed I have since purged The Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook, and Meat, and added Jubilee, Vegetables Unleased, and Southern Cooking, Global Flavors.

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7

I have an entire wall unit of actual cookbooks here. If I had to pick a few that I would consider “reference” ones I’d say Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, Fish Without a Doubt, and How to Bake Everything.

I currently have almost 100 cookbooks and that is after thinning the herd when I moved a few years ago.

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8

Ok I feel much better. I have an enormous bookshelf entirely full of cookbooks.

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It’s hard to draw a line, but my OP was more aimed at McGee versus Bittman.

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Sorry, I don’t read that in the post, so Ill just be over here leafing through Bittman and McGee and Ottolenghi and Child and Pepin and all the others.

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It’s not about any person or book in particular. It’s more about works we may turn to, not for recipes, but for the whys and wherefores, the history, technique, etc.

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I find something in nearly every book I own…ymmv.