Jennifer Armentrout

My mom gave this book to me when I left home for college and kept calling her every night to ask basic questions, like “how do I roast a chicken?” Not only does it cover those basics, it’s also got instructions for oddball tasks like how to cook a squirrel or skin a beaver tail. Not that I’ve ever needed to do either, but who knows, one of these days that knowledge might come in handy.

As newlyweds in the 60’s, my parents basically taught themselves how to cook by working their way through this book. If not for Julia Child and her co-authors, I would have grown up a lot less well fed.

This was my go-to cookbook during a brief stint as a vegetarian in college. I love the hippy vibe of the recipes, and Mollie Katzen’s charming illustrations.

Because I adore lemon cake, and there are not one, but two killer lemon cake recipes in this book.

Marcella Hazan is to Italian cooking what Julia Child is to French cooking. Her deceptively simple looking recipes are so vibrantly flavorful.

This is the first book I reach for when I need to figure out what’s going on with a recipe that’s not working. It makes food science very approachable and easy to understand for non-scientists like me.

I have this book to thank for quelling my irrational fear of pie dough. Now pie is my favorite kind of dessert to make.

The definitive reference for all plant-based foods.

Every dish I’ve cooked from this book has been spot-on delicious. That’s not always the case with restaurant cookbooks.

Part travel memoir, part recipe collection, this book presents a fascinating look at global cuisines through the lens of a flatbread.