Rating: 
Summary: Layout problems, excessive goat cheese
Review: Although this is still a comprehensive kitchen bible, it has lost much of its clean layout and concise editing. Now, pithy comments by Irma & family are replaced by gushing "Perfect" "marvelous" comments of no value. The text and icons are much less useful (and less consistent) than in previous editions. Tiny type with more white space make it impossible to read while actually cooking. Like Mrs. R's original, popular international dishes are well represented. Goat cheese is over represented. The book now suffers from "too many cooks" but probably remains indispensable. However, hang on to your earlier editons.
Rating: 
Summary: Good - But Keep the Old "Joy"
Review: The new JOY provides a needed update to the old classic to address the many changes in food trends over the past 30 years. That said, it does omit many of the treasured recipes of the old JOY. I like the new emphasis on healthier ingredients and new classics, but miss some of the old recipes that have become family favorites. I don't think it hurt the new edition to lose some of the old text that has become obsolete (like how to butcher your own animals, although that was entertaining to read). I have to add that my copy of the new JOY was incorrectly bound, with pages missing and out of order - it must have happened at the printer. But I have found some great new recipes in the new book. My advice is to think of this book as a companion to the old JOY, not a replacement.
Rating:
Summary: They fixed what wasn't broke
Review: When I bought this heavily revised (reconceptualized) edition of Rombauer's classic, I thought I would have an ideal BASIC cookbook for my new weekend house. After I moved in and began looking for basic/classic recipes in it, however, and really started trying to use it in the kitchen--I discover how terribly this huge new edition has gone awry. Want to whip up some simple muffins for Sunday morning breakfast? Here you will find a complicated ordeal of a recipe, calling for ingredients you may not have, and resulting in heavy, blah muffins. The reduced fat recipes for many other recipes still call for whole milk and whole eggs and butter, so anyone with a serious regard for arterial health will be aghast. The index, by the way, is a nightmare of missing or misleading entries. Oh how I wanted to love this book! but oh how disappointed I was in recipe after recipe. The problem is that the book is no longer really a "basic" recipe book. Instead it is an overelaborated extension of simple recipes, a gilded lily, and so if you want to make simple waffles for your family, you will search in vain for them here. What a true joy it was when I returned the book and discovered Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything--which is hip and simple and fun and au courant (and...cheaper than the new Joy). Look up Mark's recipe for basic muffins, and there it is: no problemo. And so on.
Rating: 
Summary: New Joy of Cooking is definitely not The Joy of Cooking
Review: A couple of the reviews for this book are referring to the original Joy of Cooking, not the New Joy of Cooking found on this page. I find the Joy of Cooking to be an outstanding reference for the kitchen. Excellent index, outstanding articles about different ingredients and techniques, very diverse and and concise recipes. The New Joy of Cooking on the other hand has none of these attributes. It is a poor imitation of it's predecessors and should not bear the name Joy of Cooking.
The recipes are limited in scope, the index is difficult to use, and many of the articles are not nearly as complete and concise as in the original. I would recommend skipping the New Joy and getting a copy of the original.
Rating: 
Summary: This book will not be around for my daughters 30 anniversary
Review: In 1970 my first wedding gift was a copy of "Joy of cooking" from a loving aunt. I still use this book today while living and cooking in France. Over the years I have given this book to many young brides including my daughter. But I have to say that only after a few years of light use, the binding has come off and the pages are falling out. Because of this, it is difficult to use and to rate it's context. I wonder if others have had this problem? I am going to write to the publisher.
Rating: 
Summary: My Kitchen Bible
Review: A great work that simply answers almost any question about what and how to cook. I use it weekly.
Rating:
Summary: The Authority
Review: I have a lot of cookbooks. Many of them have pretty, shiny pictures of food I could probably never make (certainly not from their recipes). The Joy is not that kind of book, but it is always the first book I pick up when I'm looking for a new dish. The recipes may not be flashy, but they WORK. The proportions are always right and the techniques are always straightforward. I frequently use it to double-check recipes from more contemporary cookbooks - you know, the ones from those celebrity chefs. If they disagree, nine times out of ten, I'll use the Joy version. I never had a copy of the original version, so I can't comment on how they compare. What I can tell you is that the All-new, All-pupose Joy of Cooking is simply indispensable.
Rating:
Summary: You Can Always Find the Recipe in Here!
Review: My mom had an older edition of this cookbook that I always used when I lived at home. I was so happy to get my own when I bought my first home. I bought the spiral bound book, and it is helpful to be able to layout the cookbook instead of having to keep finding my page/recipe. This cookbook will give lots of ideas for different meats, vegetables, breads and more.
Rating:
Summary: Cooking is Still a Joy
Review: This book is, simply, essential. Whether you are looking for a traditional recipe or trying to figure out what to do with that exotic new whatever-it-was that you got at the grocery store, whether you are cooking for yourself or for friends, the Joy has everything, and plenty of folksy details explaining how to do it with delicious results. All that's missing from this edition is the bland parochialism of earlier versions. It still contains full details on the best way to roast a turkey, bake bread, make candy, and roll out a piecrust. Only now it has recipes for hummus, spring rolls, and chocolate decadence too. The secret of the Joy's original sucess was that Irma Rombauer collected all of her friends' most sucessful recipes. (She herself hated to cook, by most accounts--her goal in the Joy was to make cooking easy for women who could no longer rely on domestic help.) This edition builds on a solid basis of traditional favorites, but it adds a spirit of exploration characteristic of (and much more gratifying too) modern cooks.
Rating:
Summary: If You Can Think of It, You Can Find It in the "Joy"
Review: This is a cook's (and a non-cook's) dream come true. Even someone who "can't boil water" could cook using this cook book. Every direction is clear and the ingredients come interpersed throughout the recipe at the precise moment they are needed rather than all lumped together at the top of the recipe. Also, any time that I've ever thought of something I'd like to make -- as simple as pancakes and eggs or as exotic as chinese tea eggs or hungarian goulash, it's there. Another helpful feature is it's description of how to choose the perfect fruit or vegetable and the various simple ways to prepare it (stewed, fried, boiled, baked, etc.). Invaluable are the hints offered to keep you from making common blunders with the food that you are making. No cook should be without this recipe book!
|
