Amazon.com: Customer reviews: James Beard's American Cookery

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 13, 2022

If you are looking for a cookbook that is a history of American cooking, this is it. I believe many people will find the recipes old-fashion with organ meats, and without the wide variety of ingredients, we cook with today. Nevertheless, it has a place in everyone's cookbook library.

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jerry i h

OK, But Not Great

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 15, 2007

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According to the editorial material, this is Mr. Beard's definitive cookbook. He is a culinary journalist of the highest caliber, and this is his penultimate collection of recipes gathered over multiple decades of culinary journalism. While it might be an impressive compendium of recipes, it is no better than many other cookbooks of similar intention. It is an interesting historical document, but is also a rather mediocre culinary resource, despite its distinguished pedigree. Considering the author's celebrity status, I was rather under whelmed by this cookbook. I do recommend it, but not enthusiastically. It does function as an all-purpose cookbook for today's typical home cook, but you can do better.
La Cuisine: Secrets of Modern French Cooking
The gold cook book
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook: Anniversary The Joy of Cooking Standard Edition: The All-Purpose Cookbook (Plume)
Selected Recipes from the Saturday Evening Post: All-American Cookbook
American Heritage Cookbook
New Cook Book (Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbooks)
The Good Housekeeping Cookbook

There are 2 distinct aspects to this cookbook. Over time, it has been widely hailed as important cultural anthropology. It is also an extensive compendium of home cooking. Neither aspect is especially convincing, but together, they make a decent culinary resource. Its main strength: for those who like to 'entertain at home' (OK, this an archaic term also from the era of the 'housewife'; by this, read: superbowl sunday, sunday dinner with the neighbors, baby showers, cocktail/diner parties, celebrations where food is expected, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother's/Father's day, etc.), and you need a source for reliable, decent recipes that will feed a crowd.

The recipes themselves are the weak point of this book. Mr. Beard has openly cribbed recipes from far and wide, and expertly assembled them as the good journalist that he is. He has a tendency to present several recipes that are only marginally different. This is a good sign, inasmuch as this indicates that the author has significantly altered the original recipe to fit a mold that he knows works correctly, and it also indicates that the author has tested it or a similar recipe (`authentic' is not one of the words I would use to describe the recipes). On the bad side, it means that the scope of the recipes is not as comprehensive as you might think by counting recipes or pages. There are substantial gaps, including entire categories of recipes you would normally expect to find in such an all-purpose cookbook. It also means that much of the original techniques in the recipes have been filtered through Mr. Beard's au courant (circa 1970) sensibilities. I am also not convinced that ALL of the recipes have been thoroughly tested by Mr. Beard.

I also note a couple of format deficiencies. The recipes do not specify the yield; you have to read the recipes closely to discern how many servings the recipe makes. The TOC of this book is woefully inadequate: it simply lists the chapter title. The chapters are thoughtfully divided into sections and subsections, but these are not listed in the TOC. You are more or less obligated to leaf through an entire chapter, which can be 100 pages long, to find something specific, or try your luck prospecting in the index.

The copyright of this book is 1972. It is mainly a collection of recipes of `home cooking' from the 50's and 60's. During this period, all females were `housewives', who did not go to work but instead got married, stayed at home, cooked, cleaned, and raised children. On the good side, the typical `housewife' had acquired substantial cooking abilities (not unlike the abilities expected of a newbie line cook applying for a job in a smallish restaurant) much superior to today's household, regardless of sex. There are many such collections of recipes, and Mr. Beard's effort is only fair to middling when compared to the competition. On the down side, this book has its share of recipes that are incomplete or vague, requiring the experienced touch of a `housewife' to make the recipe work correctly.

On the good side, this book is a valuable source of culinary anthropology, and it is this aspect that has made this cookbook justly famous. Throughout the book, Mr. Beard regales the reader with stories of what Americans ate, why they ate it, and how they prepared it. While this may be important to a writer or culinary journalist, it is at best an amusing anecdote for the typical home cook.

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Tanner McCallister

Really old school and a lot of made from scratch cooking

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 30, 2022

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Nice book but it’s super old fashioned and everything is made from scratch. Long cook times and you need a ton of ingredients per recipe.

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David K

American cooking from an old master.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 11, 2022

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American Cookery is a “bible” by an old master and while it could be considered old school by some cooks, there is much to be learned here especially if traditional america/regional cooking is what you’re looking for. No one better than JB to guide you through. I still use my copy from when it was first published and gifted this newest version to a family member who loves to cook.

4 people found this helpful

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flyingscot4

Great, great book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 10, 2022

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One of the great all-time cookbooks. Mr Beard ranks among the most well-known cooking authors in history. His books will never be out of date. His historical references to many recipes and the development of them is found in all of his many vo!umes. Along with "Joy of Cooking," "Mastering the Art of French Cooking I and 2," Craig Claiborn's and Jacque Pepín's many tomes, James Beard is ultimately among the most readable authors of what can be a difficult subject for novices. Among the others mentioned, he makes cooking fun and experimenting easy.

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Joe King

Magisterial epic American cookbook

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 15, 2006

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This cookbook obviously has huge breadth and depth of American cookery -- the cooking that is actually practiced in the kitchens of America, developed here and carried with immigrant cultures, through the centuries of American life up through the twentieth century.

What sets Beard's masterpiece apart even further, though, is his casual, storytelling style, and his depth of context for the foods that we make and eat. His fascination with the American story, as reflected in our meals, is infectious. It never ceases to grab me, like a short story that sucks me in, as I leaf through recipes in this book.

For instance: looking for cherry pie, and reading that there used to be many more kinds of cherries commonly available in the U.S., and how they compare with the ubiquitous bing today, and that people often grew "pie cherry" trees just in their yards just for pie, and Oh, by the way, here's an old recipe for cherry pie and a newer one, and how I like to do it sometimes.

Or, for instance: Note the Spanish flavors in an old Rancho California chicken recipe, browned in cornmeal then baked in a sauce that contained green olives and almonds and cumin and chili powder.

Or, for instance, how dinner parties have changed and what kinds of appetizers have gained or lost with fashion from the turn of the twentieth century until the seventies (when this edition was set down).

Finally, this is a great "starter" cookbook for it's range of simply-stated "how-to" instructions. How do you cook an ear of corn, like for how long? What makes a good hamburger patty? Beard even gives several ways to boil an egg. For most Americans starting a household or first moving away from home -- college students or newlyweds -- this is a much better cookbook than the other perennial "starter" selection, Joy of Cooking. If you just want to learn how to cook everything you already know in your bones is real food, comfort food, fun food, all the familiar American food you know and love -- this is the cookbook you want.

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Kathleen M Egan

The best cookbook ever!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 5, 2022

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This is my "go to" cookbook. Everything I cook using a James Beard's recipe is a success.

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Charlene T.

My go-go cookbook

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 14, 2022

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I had to replace my old copy - after 50 years, it was falling apart! This is the best cookbook I own.

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Miriam S. Imerman

Key Player in any Cookbook Collection

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 31, 2021

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Having enjoyed other works by this important American culinary leader, American Cookery is a welcome addition to my basic cookbook library. Like so many of us, I do much of my recipe-searching online these days. Still, it is good to keep a few basic cookbooks around, and this fits the bill nicely.

2 people found this helpful

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Kindle Edition -- Not very useful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 2, 2010

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I'm sure the paper version of American Cookery is as wonderful as everyone says. But this is the second kindle-edition cookbook I have had to return for a refund because it is practically useless as a cooking tool. If you are content with reading a cookbook as if it were a novel, without knowing what is inside each chapter before you get to it, then by all means, enjoy the Kindle edition. But if you are interested in actually knowing what recipes are included and expect to be able to jump to a specific recipe in the index with a link, you will be seriously disappointed.

I really resent cookbook publishers who create an ebook edition with absolutely no forethought or planning as to what makes an ebook, especially a reference tool, which a cookbook is, actually work for the user. It is NOT a novel. You don't just sit down and read it. You jump around, look at specific recipes, jump to related recipes. In a paper book, you have indexed recipes and page numbers that take you there. In an ebook you need to have direct links that allow you to jump around. This James Beard classic only has links in the chapter heading and contains an apparently scanned index that contains page numbers, for which there is absolutely no correspondence in an ebook. The publisher of this book seems only to have made an e-book out of it in order to increase their revenue without giving the least bit of care to delivering a quality product.

I have several e-cookbooks that are beautifully formatted (two of Mark Bittman's and one by Madhur Jaffrey). Their publishers took the time and effort to make their product user-friendly and truly valuable reference tools for serious cooks.

Okay, venting over. I might repurchase this book as a paper book because it is a classic. But anyone contemplating putting this on their Kindle needs to be forewarned that it's not a very useful product.

64 people found this helpful

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5 star		82%
4 star		10%
3 star		4%
2 star		1%
1 star		3%

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