I’ve already written the (semi) complete history of this series of books. This happens to be the first one released in the series and was written by the illustrious M.F.K. Fisher.

Each spiral bound book measures 9 inches by 6 inches and is about 1/4 inch thick.
More after the cut including full photos of select pages.

Honestly I have never made a single recipe out of this book though I have made several of these recipes and do know that the versions presented here are better than the ones I used. Some of these are very classic French recipes and I could not help posting them. Its easy to see why this book and this series is so sought after by collectors after reading this book.

Each image links to a larger picture if you want to read or use the recipes.

Saucisson en Croûte (sausage baked in pastry crust) and Fondue de Fromage (French style cheese fondue)

Quiche au Fromage (open faced cheese tart) and Salade Niçoise (mediterranean vegetable salad)

Soufflé au Fromage (cheese soufflé) and Anchoyade (hot anchovy canapé)

Crêpes Fourrées Gratinées (filled French pancakes), Duxelles and Velouté sauce

Coq au Vin à la Bourguignonne (chicken simmered in red wine with onions and mushrooms)

Boeuf Bourguignon (beef stew with red wine)

Champignons Farcis (baked stuffed mushroom caps)

Carottes Glacées (glazed carrots) and Oignons Glacés à Blanc (glazed white onions) on the left. Pommes de Terre ANna (crusty molded potatoes) on the right.

Profiteroles (cream-puff pastry rosettes) and Compote de Fruits (fruit poached in vanilla syrup)

Mousse au Chocolat (chocolate mousse). There are two indexes, the English one first then one with the French recipe titles.

Laughter is brightest where food is best.
~Irish Proverb

Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food.
~Craig Claiborne

The preparation of good food is merely another expression of art, one of the joys of civilized living
~Dione Lucas

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.
~Julia Child

I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.
~Robert Farrar Capon

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
~Virginia Woolf

My kitchen is a mystical place, a kind of temple for me. It is a place where the surfaces seem to have significance, where the sounds and odors carry meaning that transfers from the past and bridges to the future.
~Pearl Bailey

This recipe is actually called Warm Springs Vidalia Marmalade and its from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. But I don’t like the rosemary. It detracts from the overall recipe in my opinion and I’ve found you can use any onion you want. Vidalia is very sweet and nice but you can use any variety of sweet onion - Maui, Oso Sweet, Rio Sweet, etc. or even just regular yellow or white. But the sweet onions definitely give it a nice kick.

I have put this on burgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, sausages, etc. Anything I would want to have cooked onions on.

1 pound of onions, sliced very thin
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Saute onions in olive oil over medium heat until lightly brown. Add garlic. Cook for 1 minute. Stir in remaining ingredients and reduce to low. Cook for 5 minutes until thick, stirring occasionally.

Eel and Crab sushi rolls with ginger and soy sauce (in a fish bottle) behind the sushi grass

Shrimp Balls

Caramel marble Pocky

*I made this dinner so that a co-worker could sample sushi (specifically with eel). She had never tried it. She ended up hating it, but at least she attempted to taste it!

The couscous was made using a speedy tip I found: put the dry couscous in the box tier, pour the hot water (or chicken stock) over top, put on the lid and let it sit until its “done”. Easy and quick. And I have a microwave at my disposal at work to do this with in the future.

Leftover shredded North Carolina BBQ Pork - why left over? Turns out with some guys at least that the easiest way to their hearts IS through their stomachs. Actually I made this for my boyfriend and he loved it!

Frozen carrots

Mandarin oranges

Marble Pocky - Kaoru Rum Raisin flavored

This recipe is so incredibly easy and quick and with only 3 ingredients!

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 1/4 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar together. Add about 1 3/4 cups of the flour and mix well. Its going to be a wet and sticky dough.

Sprinkle a pastry cloth or kneading surface with the remaining flour and roll out the dough to about 1/4″ thick, working in the surface flour as you go. DO NOT overwork the dough! It will end up crumbly and you won’t be able to cut decent cookies out of it. So handle it as little as possible.

Cut into whatever shape or pattern you desire. This dough will NOT shrink or increase during baking so keep that in mind!!

Bake at 325 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

I like to make this at Christmas time especially, and drizzled with chocolate - though they are the perfect companion to a nice hot pot of tea as is. They are very rich and buttery, of course.

This has been called the cookbook series that any cookbook collector MUST own, or they aren’t a real cookbook collector! The reason these are so highly sought after is the amazing depth and range of recipes in them, extremely remarkable and noteworthy for 1968. They were discontinued in part due to complaints that ingredients were hard to acquire for the home cook. Not so anymore. And these recipes are just fantastic! I cook out of them all.the.time.

First published in 1968 by Time Life there are 27 of these books in the series…I only own 6. I eagerly seek them out whenever I can find them at thrift stores, garage sales and the like. I don’t do Ebay anymore for personal reasons so I have little recourse. But I will continue to find them I’m sure. I have heard that they are both easy to find as well as difficult. For me personally they have been difficult to track down for some reason.

So sadly for me I only own the wire bound copies that feature just the recipes - also called the kitchen copies as they are just the recipes to be used in the kitchen instead of the beautiful photographic hardbound editions. I do not own any of the hardbound editions at this time. I’ve been meaning to complete this particular collection but have never gotten around to it for whatever reason.

More after the cut including the complete list of books and full photos of the American Cooking edition.

The entire list of titles in the series (and authors) for those who would like to know:

African Cooking by Laurens van der Post
American Cooking by Dale Brown
American Cooking : Creole and Acadian by Peter S. Feibleman
American Cooking : The Eastern Heartland by Jose Wilson
American Cooking : The Great West by Jonathan Leonard Norton
American Cooking : The Melting Pot by James Shenton, Angelo Pellegrini, Dale Brown, Israel Shenker, Peter Wood
American Cooking : New England by Jonathan Norton Leonard
American Cooking : The Northwest by Dale Brown
American Cooking : Southern Style by Eugene Walter
Cooking of the British Isles by Adrian Bailey
Cooking of the Caribbean Islands by Linda Wolfe
Chinese Cooking by Emily Hahn
Classic French Cooking by Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey
Cooking of Provincial France by M.F.K. Fisher
Cooking of Germany by Nika Standen Hazelton
Cooking of India by Santha Rama Rau
Cooking of Italy by Waverly Root
Cooking of Japan by Rafael Steinberg
Latin American Cooking by Jonathan Norton Leonard
Middle Eastern Cooking by Harry G. Nickles
Pacific and Southeast Asian Cooking by Rafael Steinberg
Quintet of Cuisines by Michael and Frances Field
Russian Cooking by Helen and George Papashvly
Cooking of Scandinavia by Dale Brown
Cooking of Spain and Portugal Peter S. Feibleman
Cooking of Vienna’s Empire by Joseph Wechsberg
Wines and Spirits by Alec Waugh

At any rate I decided to highlight the very classic American Cooking first. It just seemed right to me for some reason. Next week I’ll feature another one on the list until I have all of the ones I currently own posted.

Each image links to a larger picture if you want to read or use the recipes.

Each spiral bound book measures 9 inches by 6 inches and is about 1/4 inch thick.

Cucumber Bisque on the left and Pumpkin Soup on the right. The Pumpkin Soup is fabulous!

Buttermilk Fried Onions and Corn Oysters on the left and Boston Baked Beans on the right.

Hashed Brown Potatoes on the left and Mashed Potatoes on the right.

Potato Salad on the left and Tomato Aspic on the right - GROSS!!

Baked Apples and Cranberry-Orange Relish (Cranberry Sauce - and a VERY good recipe for it too!) on the left. Old-fashioned Apple Butter and Grandmother Brown’s Rhubarb Marmalade on the right.

Stuffed Pork Chops and Baked Bourbon-glazed Ham.

Red Flannel Hash and Chili con Carne - except it has beans in it.

Duck in Orange Aspic with Orange and Onion Salad - this recipe looks revolting, which is the only reason I included it!

Jambalaya and Barbecued Shrimp. These both sound heavenly and l think I need to test them soon, especially the shrimp.

Lobster Newburg (what American cookbook is complete without this?!) and Scalloped Clams on the left. Pacific Oyster Stew on the right - and this recipe is beautiful, simple, easy and SO SO good!!

Chiles Rellenos - a recipe I can NOT believe is included in a cookbook from 1968! On the right is a breakfast cake recipe for Snipdoodle or what I have always called a Snickerdoodle cake. Its also a very good recipe and worth trying.

The quintessential Apple Pie and Pumpkin Pie recipes…and these are good ones!

Butterscotch Brownies and Chocolate Brownies. On the right the first page of the index.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.
~Lin Yutang

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.
~Laurie Colwin

If your regrets linger, if you cannot find inspiration in solitude, then you still have much to learn from the writers and poets and the cooks on becoming the artist of your own life… you can never re-create the
past. But you can shape your own future. And you can make a cake.
~Jacqueline Duval

If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.
~Fernand Point

Happy and successful cooking doesn’t rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life.
~Georges Blanc

Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort.
~Norman Kolpas

Cuisine is only about making foods taste the way they are supposed to taste.
~Chef Charlie Trotter

This recipe is literally the best recipe you could ever need for cheesecake. I’m serious. It produces such a rich, tasty product that you don’t actually need to put anything on it or with it. A good cheesecake should always be able to be consumed on its own without all the “frills”. Don’t make this unless you have time to “babysit” it. The cooking method is what makes a cheesecake a cheesecake.

Beautiful isn’t it??

For the crust:

1 1/2 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs (or digestive biscuits if you happen to have those on hand!)
1/3 cup white sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (it gives it a nice kick but isn’t needed)

For the filling:

(4) 8 ounce blocks of cream cheese, softened
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk (sometimes I replace 1/4 cup of the evap. milk with buttermilk)
1 tablespoon vanilla

Mix together the crust ingredients and press into a 9 inch springform pan (or any type you like the springform is just easier to use with a cheesecake). Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes and let cool slightly.

In a large mixing bowl combine the filling ingredients. Whip it with a mixer until combined, but DO NOT overbeat it, that tends to lend to cracks. Pour into the crust.

Now comes the tricky part, the part that assures you a good cheesecake. And no it doesn’t need a water bath (unless you really feel like it) Put the pan into a 300 to 325 degree preheated oven - you may have to adjust this down depending on how brown it gets or if it starts to crack (its cooking at too high a temperature if that happens). Now check on it from time to time.

You want to cook it until its still jiggly in the middle but definitely set up. Should take about an hour or so depending on your oven, outside temperatures, cooking environment, ingredients, etc. When set up turn the oven OFF and let it sit inside for at least 60 mins. Do NOT open the oven door to check it at this point. It will continue to cook slowly.

Then you need to cool it slowly. I usually just let it sit in the oven for a couple more hours and then remove it to the fridge but otherwise let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes and then remove it to the fridge. The slower it cools the less chance you have of cracks forming.

It will crack if the interior doesn’t cool slowly enough, heat up slowly or apparently if you don’t make this on a Tuesday! Cracks happen…but cover it up with fruit and your good to go! If its too gooey (like you didn’t cook it long enough) freeze it. That usually sets it up nicely.

This is a recipe that takes practice I’m afraid. Not that the results are bad if it cracks, they are still tasty, it just doesn’t produce as pretty a cheesecake.

The usual way I make cheesecake is in mini form. You can find prepared mini graham cracker crusts in the grocery store.

Yielding 6 minis (with a little left over):

8 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons evaporated milk or buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Make the same as above except put the mini pans on a cookie sheet to bake. And WATCH them, they cook very fast (about 20 minutes or so).

A completely boring and terrible meal. I was in a big rush and already late to work when putting this together. Not to mention I was trying to find something low in fat and calories as I made CHEESECAKE for my co-workers birthday.

Its just rice with with Katsuo Fumi furikake (bonito & sesame seeds furikake), imitation crab meat and frozen green beans. I also tossed in some marble Pocky - Kaoru Rum Raisin. I ended up not eating them, there was plenty of cheesecake to consume.

I found these at my local Target Dollar Spot. The only kind I found, no other styles or designs or characters. Guess its a good thing I still like Strawberry Shortcake! They fill up very nicely and will fit (2) Lock & Lock sandwich boxes with room to spare, so they are very roomy. Definitely bigger than a traditional Japanese kinchaku. Its made of nylon and has a narrow strip of velcro keeping it closed. They do have flat rectangular bottoms to allow for a flat transport of your boxes or containers.

Worth every penny of the dollar I spent!

So I had to buy a new travel coffee mug to take coffee to work. I ended up buying a perfectly boring and normal one, except for where the warning is regarding “hot product inside”:

Yup, the INTERIOR of the lid? Does that even count as a warning then??

Yeah, not really food related but bizarre to me none-the-less.

Sliced strawberries and applesauce

Caramel marble Pocky (it was a “chocolate needed” kinda day)

Dried apricots, slice of butter, strawberry preserves (I prefer to melt it and put it on my waffles as opposed to using syrup), frozen Belgian waffles

The bestest (is so a word), richest, not too gooey but not too cakey recipe on the planet for brownies! I’m not kidding. These are the kind you better make for other people or with other people in attendance or you will eat the entire pan before it has a chance to cool!

6 squares unsweetened baking chocolate, melted or 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder and 1/3 cup plus 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour

Mix everything but the flour together until throughly mixed. Add flour a little at a time and mix. This ends up being a thick batter. Pour into a greased 8 by 8 or 9 by 9 baking pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

I like children - fried.
~W.C. Fields

I like my coffee like I like my women. In a plastic cup.
~Eddie Izzard

I pray that death may strike me in the middle of a large meal. I wish to be buried under the tablecloth between four large dishes.
~Marc Desuagiers

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.
~Voltaire

It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can’t do it.
~John Kenneth Galbraith

Never eat more than you can lift.
~Miss Piggy

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.
~Erma Bombeck

When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.
~Elaine Boosler