Hacker News Books

Ruhlman's Twenty is a great first cooking book. Heartily seconded. I'd get "Ratio", and the Kindle version of "The Flavor Bible", to accompany it. That'll set you up for a lifetime of cooking without ever looking up a recipe again.

(Keller's books are all Ruhlman's writing, right?)

I'm also a huge fan of America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country (and I've found them to be extremely popular amongst engineers and science-types). During college a friend and I shared a subscription to their website catalog of recipes.

I'm ordering the Cooking School book as we speak. I'm currently trying to teach the bf how to cook and this seems like the perfect tool to go through.

Another recommendation I'd make for improvisational cooks/bakers is The Flavor Bible. It's great for "what do I do with these random ingredients in the fridge"?

Cooking. I am not a chef, but I have spent the time and effort to be able and willing to tackle nearly any recipe in the cuisines I'm familiar with. More importantly, I've made my wife, family, friends, strangers, and myself, happy at my table and via gifts of food. In terms of books, the biggest difference-makers have been 'The Way to Cook', Julia Child, 'The French Laundry Cookbook', Thomas Keller, et al, and 'The Flavor Bible', Page and Dornenburg.

I love to cook, I think because at my core I love to make things and my biggest motivation comes from creating and sharing, which is why I got into programming, and also why I'm drawn to DIY home improvement/car repair/etc. Cooking is an escape from the screen, a great way to get hands on and create something physical, and very rewarding, especially when shared with friends.

Over time I've found myself making more ambitious recipes, and these days I often don't follow recipes at all, I like knowing the ratios of ingredients and flavors and creating tasty things from scratch. I cook for myself most of the time, which makes this approach work...if I mess up on a new improvised recipe, I just have a less-than-perfect dinner. Then, when I'm cooking for friends, I'll whip out a home grown recipe that I've made enough times to trust.

I've found paper cookbooks preferable to apps, because I can spill stuff on them, burn them, use them with wet hands, set stuff down on them, and they don't turn off. I have a couple of cookbooks with simple, staple recipes that I use for reference, but I've also found The Flavor Bible(1) to be incredibly useful—it basically works as a big index of ingredient affinities, so you can look up flavors that go well together for a huge variety of ingredients.

I keep my kitchen stocked with a lot of basics, but I live right near a grocery store, so I'll drop by after work if I need anything special.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/The-Flavor-Bible-Creativity-Imaginativ...

The Flavor Bible is also fun to flip to an arbitrary page in and read in either direction, but it really wants to be a web app, doesn't it? (There's obviously a bunch of web apps that try, but they don't have the curation that the book has).

I don't know if you've been following Myrhvold's cooking stuff, but my understand is that there's a fair bit of mythbusting going on too; he gave a talk recently where he claimed to debunk the notion that you have to poach duck in fat to confit it, for instance (lies! all lies!). My cofounder Dave is a cooking school grad and he's sure that this book is going to be hugely important, even if you already have McGee.

But, $500 for a book!

The Flavor Bible is a published book version of what you're describing.

I was curious about this as well, as it looked to me like a ripoff of "The Flavor Bible", by Page and Dornenburg (Same method of using bold all caps, then bold, etc for showing the important ingredients). However, from the book link, apparently: The data for this book was obtained by programitally[SIC] examining just under a million publicly available recipes.

That method of acquiring the data shows in the less useful results. For example, with basil, it includes in the top pairings SALT, GARLIC, ONIONS, BLACK PEPPER. Which, of course, would be found in pretty much any recipe involving basil. Yet, it misses the more classic pairings like mozzarella cheese, eggs, lamb, pizza, etc.

My recommendation -- buy "The Flavor Bible".

I'll strongly second the Cook's Illustrated recommendation. If you want to know the reasons behind the recipes, there's no better place to start. I've used things I've learned from their articles many, many times to help with other recipes.

And here's some books that spend at least as much time talking about how to cook as they do giving lists of ingredients.

_The Zuni Cafe Cookbook_ by Judy Rodgers

_Cooking by Hand_ by Paul Bertolli

The French Laundry book by Thomas Keller is worth a read.

If you're into charcuterie, someone else mentioned Michael Ruhlman; his book _Charcuterie_ with chef Bryan Polcyn is excellent. _The River Cottage Meat Cookbook_ is also good.

If you want to go deep into ingredients, _The Elements of Taste_ by Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky (and _The Flavor Bible_ by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg (I haven't personally read that one all the way through, though)).

And you can always just pick up a culinary school textbook.

On Food And Cooking is AMAZING. McGee used to live in Palo Alto too.

I just bought the Thomas Keller Sous Vide book. I'll probably buy the myrhvold book too.

You know what I've found terribly useful lately? The Flavor Bible.

On the other hand, somebody got me the recent Herve This book on molecular gastronomy and didn't really get much out of it.