New and Improved.
Those words go together like Peanut Butter & Jelly. Bert & Ernie. Green Eggs & Ham.
They’re usually treated as a package, with anything that’s new automatically considered as improved.
Unfortunately, the Better Homes & Gardens: New Cook Book, 16th Edition, is definitely new, but in my opinion not really improved.
Well, that’s not entirely true. The 16th edition has better production values than my tried-and-true 1981 version. Suffice it to say that I like my older copy somewhat better.
But don’t take this review as a total trashing of the cookbook as a whole. Frankly, I love the BH&G: New Cook Book in both forms. Just like I love all my kids equally. I just love some of them more for some things. Shhhhh…don’t tell them that, it’s my secret. For the record:
Important Dad StatementI love all my children exactly the same amount, just like my cookbooks.
Geez, I could get into deep guacamole if I didn’t make that statement very publicly.
Before we get in too deeply, let me make it clear that this cookbook is best used in the loose-leaf version. The best part is that loose leaf copies are available for as little as $1.40 for a used copy (plus shipping and handling). If you’d rather buy new, you can find them for $7.00. Not much cost for the immense value this cookbook brings to the kitchen!
If you can keep a secret, I’ve ordered copies for all the Hectic Kids for Christmas. That’s how much I love this cookbook.
While I opened with a gripe about the newest edition not being better, it is improved in some ways. The typesetting is superior and the pages have held up better than my original copy. The cookbook also has more bonus material. My original version is a bare-bones cookbook. You get a load of recipes without a lot of fluff. Honestly, the bonus material in the new version is helpful and well-written, but if I want to read something for leisure it’s usually not a cookbook. OK, I’ll admit that I do read cookbooks for fun…but I’m a weird bookworm!
Both version have over 20 sections of recipes plus a few bonus sections. The sections make sense for the way I cook. And in the loose-leaf version the sections are delineated with true stick-up tabs so you can quickly jump to a section. That’s one of my biggest complaints about bound cookbooks. It’s a pain in the backside to get to the sections. You search the table of contents to find the start of a section, then flip pages to get there. The looseleaf format combines the table of contents search with the physical jumping to the section. Brilliant!
The one major improvement that the newer edition has over the original is the format of the section divider. The back of the divider has the recipes in the section organized by sub-category. For instance, on the back of the bread tab is a sub-category called Quick Breads. All the quick breads are listed together on the divider despite them being scattered throughout the section. It’s a little touch that makes using this cookbook awesome.
It’s interesting to note the recipes have been revised in the newer version. While it’s the same overall cookbook, many of the recipes are quite different between the editions. For instance, I have always used the French Toast recipe from my original copy. As I reviewed the two books, I noticed that the newer recipe uses 4 eggs and 1 cup of milk instead of the 3 eggs and 3/4 cup of milk. My kids have always complained that measuring 3/4 cup of anything is hard. Yeah, they’re the microwave generation, so eyeballing 3/4 of a cup is hard. They usually pull out a 1/2 and 1/4 measuring cup so they don’t have to strain their brains. The newer cookbook makes their lives easier (and I hear less whining about their inability to measure things by eyeballing them)!
I also noted that the newer edition calls for challah, brioche, or dry white bread in place of the much simpler dry white bread of the original. I don’t know about you, but we don’t have challah or brioche laying around. Dry white bread…that’s another story. We’ve often got that (since the microwave generation is unable to use twist-ties effectively).
The recipes in the newer version are also divided into steps, rather than a running commentary of prose paragraphs. That makes them easier to read and follow. Since cooking is essentially a read:take an action:go back to the recipe steps process, the steps make it easier to find your place when you return.
Taken as a whole, the Better Homes and Gardens: New Cook Book is an excellent resource. You’re not going to find a plethora of exotic recipes (although there are some that I would consider off the beaten path), but will find recipes everybody is capable of making with great results. They don’t use unfamiliar ingredients nor do they require inordinate amounts of time.
If this cookbook was a car, it’d be a base-model Chevrolet. Nothing fancy but a reliable resource to get you from hungry to fed with a minimum of fuss.
If you don’t have a cookbook like that in your arsenal, or you’re looking for a new one…you can’t go wrong with the Better Homes and Gardens: New Cook Book in any edition!
