Recipe for Paring a Cookbook Collection

[grasswire]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F06%2F12%2FFDIL1JQOTL.DTL

The story of a couple who winnowed their hoard of cookbooks by implementing a few rules about what would stay and what would go.

"For the better part of the next month, a home-cooked meal was on the table each night. It was refreshing to find recipes that had been pre-tested time and again - of the 20 we made, surprisingly few were busts. And what began as spring cleaning turned quickly into a lesson on what makes a worthy cookbook.

Most of our one-subject books were out - precious as the book was, if we were dying for creme brulee, we could probably find about 6,000 recipes for it online. It was the compilations that proved most valuable. Our favorites (see sidebars for our top 10 lists) included collections from America's Test Kitchen, Real Simple magazine and Martha Stewart's Everyday Food. These are chosen by food editors who cull through hundreds of recipes to find the best ones, so it's only natural that many of these are winners. Of course, ahem, we also love "The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook" - both volumes - but those went into our initial saves.

Favorite dishes
At the end of the month, we picked our two favorite dishes from each pile and came away with a quick stir-fry using easy-to-find ingredients, a straightforward roast chicken, crisp oven fries and dark, fudgy brownies.

We were surprised at the simplicity of the winners. It's all too easy these days to get carried away with substitutions and adaptations when following recipes, but we were delighted to find such basic staples in our search - when followed exactly, the accompanying recipes are easy to prepare and taste delicious; we'll undoubtedly turn to them again and again."

[trud]

1. they made that a lot of work

I did some paring a few years ago, but I just got rid of the ones I had never made anything from and on flipping through them decided I never would. But I only have 100 or so.

[Warpy]

2. I've probably kept more than I should

but my bags to go to the library donation box are full and I've just been too lazy to go and empty them.

The ones I cull without mercy are the ones with restaurantitis, the ones that refer you to multiple pages for things the chef who wrote the book depends on grunts to have ready at all times.

The others are the ones with big pictures and small recipes. If there are some really classic recipes in them, I'll copy those down into a cookbook of the same food genre that I am keeping then let somebody else clutter his/her kitchen with beautifully photographed food without much print.

More difficult to eliminate are the niche cookbooks, ethnic or diet. That will take sitting down and reading the whole thing to evaluate it properly.

The ones I'll eventually keep are the all purpose books with the most information on often unfriendly ingredients.