This year marks the 90th birthday of The Joy of Cooking! This cookbook has guided generation after generation of home cooks. Here are our most-cherished takeaways.
14 Lessons We Learned From The Joy of Cooking
Updated on Apr. 10, 2024
1
/
14
The Basic Techniques
For many first-time home cooks, The Joy of Cooking was an invaluable reference, explaining cooking methods like braising, blanching and deglazing. Community Cook Cyndi Gerken of Naples, Florida says it was the perfect cookbook to own when she was first learning how to cook.
2
/
14
How to Make Curry
Country Captain Chicken was cited by several fans as a favorite that they make again and again. (Check out our slow cooker version.) It’s a chicken curry dish flavored with tomatoes, raisins, brown sugar, ginger and cinnamon. The recipes notes say that versions of this recipe have been part of American cooking since colonial times.
Here are 34 more ways to love the warm and spicy flavor of curry!
3
/
14
How to Make Hollandaise Sauce in a Blender
Over time, The Joy of Cooking adapted recipes like classic hollandaise sauce to include new appliances being used by home cooks. The cookbook recommends emulsifying the sauce’s ingredients in a blender. Learn how it works.
4
/
14
How to Make Penuche
Community Cook Holly Balzer-Harz of Malone, New York has fond memories of making delicious penuche recipe with her adopted aunt—who just happened to be newspaper food columnist Penny Prudence! Her aunt reviewed every new cookbook, but her favorite was always The Joy of Cooking. The cookbook differentiates penuche from its cousin, the praline, as it’s cut into thick, fudge-like squares.
Make your own batch of the classic brown sugar fudge known as Penuche!
5
/
14
How to Choose the Right Ingredients
One of the features that makes The Joy of Cooking so helpful to home cooks is the Know Your Ingredients section. Different varieties of spices, vinegar, oils, nuts and more are explained in depth, making it a breeze for folks to include more of these ingredients in their cooking.
6
/
14
How to Use Pineapple Many Many Ways
Community Cook Anne Sheehy of Lawrence, Massachusettes inherited her mother’s well-loved and marked-up 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking. She says that this edition focused heavily on pineapple recipes, like pineapple pie, pineapple upside-down cake, and her family’s favorite pineapple and apricot marmalade. Later editions of the cookbook omitted many of those pineapple recipes, including the marmalade.
7
/
14
How to Make a Perfect Cheesecake
When home cooks flip through their copies of The Joy of Cooking they can quickly tell which recipes were the favorites—by finding the pages with the most stains and earmarks! Several fans found that for them the most well-worn page was for the New York Cheesecake recipe, and there are tips and tricks for baking a perfect cheesecake included as well. An early version of the cookbook recommends the best toppings as wine-soaked currants, shaved chocolate or a sweet strawberry glaze—similar to what you’d find in this recipe.
8
/
14
Base Recipes to Use Over and Over
Along with the ingredients directory and cooking techniques, the cookbook also gave home cooks the basic recipes for favorite dishes such as chocolate chip cookies, French toast, omelets and pasta sauce. Learning the foundation for basic dishes gave generations of cooks the confidence to tweak and adapt recipes to their liking, and to create flavors all their own.
9
/
14
How to Whip Up Homemade Eggnog
When polled about their favorite recipes from the book several people mentioned the homemade eggnog, and that making it was a cherished part of their holiday celebrations. Recent editions of the cookbook include cooked and uncooked eggnogs, both rich with cream, liquor and spices.
10
/
14
How to Make Thanksgiving Dinner from Scratch
One The Joy of Cooking reader shared how overwhelmed she felt when faced with the prospect of cooking Thanksgiving dinner from scratch for the first time for her family —and how this cookbook saved her! The cookbook includes a complete menu for Thanksgiving—and for other holidays and occasions like Christmas, Passover, brunch and wedding buffets.
11
/
14
Mastering Rich Rolled Cookies
This is another favorite recipe that readers say they always come back to, having learned it first from JOC. This is a very buttery sugar cookie dough perfect for cutting into shapes and decorating. The cookbook mentions that it’s common to make the mistake of using too much flour in the rolling process, which can mess with the measurements in the dough. Instead of using a ton of flour, chill the dough at least an hour before rolling. Get the recipe for our favorite roll-out cookies here.
12
/
14
Perfect Pancakes
The Joy of Cooking recipes for pancakes are among readers’ favorites because they are easy to scale up or down for the number of people you’re cooking for. For picture-perfect pancakes, JOC urges home cooks to avoid overbeating the batter, ignoring any lumps and to make sure the griddle or pan has an even heat. Our Test Kitchen agrees! Get our step-by-step guide for how to make the best pancakes.
13
/
14
How to Stir Up the Macaroni and Cheese
Another one of those basic recipes that home cooks use and treasure, this mac n’ cheese also shows how adding a few ingredients can improve the flavor of a dish. Minced onion and a bay leaf are dropped into the simmering cheese sauce, and this simple tweak makes the whole dish more delectable.
14
/
14
How to Use Unusual Ingredients in Dessert
When Irma S. Rombauer wrote The Joy of Cooking, she knew that the economy of cooking was important to her readers. Depression-era and WWII-era home cooks had to get creative when basic ingredients were too expensive or unavailable. The cookbook’s recipe for a chocolate cake made with mayonnaise is a good example of this creativity and economy—and this surprise ingredient makes for a moist and delicious cake!
Note: Every product is independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
