Cookbooks look back to basics for cooking novices

With households watching every penny, a growing number of Americans are ditching their takeout menus and heading into the kitchen to cook dinner at home. The trouble is, many don’t know how.

After years of cookbooks that ranged from pretentious celebrity chef volumes to glossy tributes to cupcakes, the latest trend embraces Cooking 101 – books that take readers back to the basics.

Dorothy Harr, a 41-year-old marketing executive from Centerville, Va., is among the more than 40 percent of people surveyed by Worthington, Ohio-based consumer research firm BIGresearch who say they’re cutting back on dinners out.

But her limited skills mean her family doesn’t eat much variety.

“I tend to cook the same thing over and over and it gets really boring,” she said. She’s hoping a brush-up of the basics will change that.

Basic cookbooks have long been a staple of the cookbook industry.

Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” walked Americans through Gallic cuisine. Fannie Farmer taught home cooks how to measure properly.

“The Joy of Cooking” introduced asparagus and how to handle it. What has changed is the level of knowledge – or, perhaps, ignorance – these new books assume.

“People want to throw around terms like ‘jus’ or ‘coulis,’” said Anne Mendelson, a culinary historian and contributing editor at Gourmet magazine. “Some people say we’re getting more sophisticated.

“But then you look at the cookbooks meant to teach people to cook and you hear horror stories of the trouble ordinary people have using those books.”

But some culinary observers worry a whole shelf of books on cooking 101 won’t help a culture that has moved so far from the kitchen.

“We’ve fallen into the hands of other people making our food for us,” Mendelson said. “And I don’t know if there’s any road back from that.”