More than 59,000 titles pop up on an Amazon "cooking" search; Nach Waxman's Kitchen Arts & Letters store in New York boasts more than 13,000 food-related titles; Bonnie Slotnick Books, a purveyor of used cookbooks in Greenwich Village, stocks 4,000 different titles. Two thousand ninety-six new cookbooks were published last year alone, according to R.R. Bowker. Did all of these vie for "classic" status? You bet. But precious few rise to the top to become indispensable in the cook's library.

PW conducted an informal survey of food professionals to find out what, in their view, makes a cookbook a classic, and it turns out the ingredients are both basic and rare and not often found in combination: good writing, great voice, pure utility. We also asked them to tell us their absolute must-have cookbooks. Our readers are invited to sample the reading menu.

Classic, Defined (Sort of)

"Are you asking me for my favorite cookbooks, the all-time great contributors to the field, books that have sustained their popularity or books for a desert island?" muses Nach Waxman, whose New York City store is a mecca for serious foodies. "Are we looking for the most important book or the most useful? Should they all be absolutely on cooking?" When pressed for a classic, however defined, Waxman cites two long-reigning heavyweights—Joy of Cooking and Julia Child's great Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl is a little more decisive in saying what constitutes a classic: "You want the books that live in the kitchen." With thousands of books in her private library, Reichl mentions three that stay close at hand: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf, 1992) by Marcella Hazan, The Breakfast Book (Knopf, 1987) by Marion Cunningham and The Gourmet Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), which Reichl co-edited with John Willoughby and Zanne Early Stewart—admittedly a self-serving choice but, she explains, "Before it, I didn't have an all-purpose book. I worked from scraps of paper." Marcella Hazan's book, she says, "is just completely reliable," and Cunningham's has the kind of recipes she likes but always forgets about. "Raised waffles, really good coffee cakes. My copy is literally falling apart."

A few other books have recently migrated closer to Reichl's must-list: Judy Rodgers's Zuni Café Cookbook (Norton, 2002), Diana Kennedy's The Cuisines of Mexico(Clarkson Potter, 2000), Madhur Jaffrey's Invitation to Indian Cooking(Ecco, 1999) and Patricia Wells's BistroCooking (Workman, 1989). Russ Parsons's How to Read a French Fry(Houghton Mifflin, 2001), "about the science of cooking from a cook's perspective," Reichl calls a more "vernacular" version of Harold McGee's revised and updated On Food and Cooking(Scribner, 2004), which is near or at the top of almost everyone's list. "Parsons is beyond Harold McGee, who is essential, but if you're just a cook who wants to know why you need to soak beans or fry potatoes two times, Parsons has the answers," Reichl says.

Joy-ous Praise

The Joy of Cooking, perhaps along with The Settlement Cookbook and The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, is the book that many people learned to cook from and the one that still seems to garner the most favor. "I was in college and got sick and tired of eating in fourth-rate Italian restaurants," Waxman says, explaining why he turned to Joy. "I still think it's an utterly remarkable book, and the new edition [Scribner, 1997] is just fine. It doesn't have the personality or character of the old editions, but it is still a terrific book to learn from. I never cook from it but I refer to it all the time. Turkey Croquettes? You turn to it to see how the hell do you make a turkey croquette. I keep two editions on my shelf, the new one and one from the '50s."(A new Joy of Cooking is slated for fall 2006.)

At Bookspan's Good Cook book club, Joy continues to top all others in popularity. At Powell's Books for Cooks and Gardeners in Portland, Ore., Joy is consistently one of the top 10 sellers.

"We suggest Joy as a wedding gift and as a book to learn from—even the new edition, which we recommend as a replacement book for those whose older book has worn out," says Susan Crittenden, manager of Powell's. In the all-purpose basic book category, she also nominates Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins's The New Basics Cookbook(Workman, 1989), Sally Schneider's A New Way to Cook (Artisan, 2001) and Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (Wiley, 1998). "All of them are contenders for classic status," she says. James Beard's American Cookery (Little, Brown, 1980) has also achieved top honors in many quarters.

Bonnie Slotnick stocks as many copies of early Joys as she can in her eponymous New York shop, mostly editions from the '20s to the '50s. As for other classic works, she says her appreciation is based on her customer's demands for them—titles such as Penelope Casas's The Foods and Wines of Spain (Knopf, 1982), Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food (the predecessor to the revised edition, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, Knopf, 2000) and Barbara Tropp's The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking (Hearst reissue, 1996).

Mastering the Art of French Pastry by Bruce Healy and Paul Bugat (Barron's, 1984) was one of the most in demand recently out-of-print books at Slotnick's shop. "It's not on my list of greats, but it has an obsessive cult following," she says. What she looks for when she enshrines a book is a personal voice and someone who has something to tell the world. "You know how immersed [in the world] Julia Child was. For Marcella Hazan, Italian food is her life. And Diana Kennedy went to Mexico and ground her own chilies. These are not people to whom the publisher said, you'd better get another book on the shelf. If the person was rigorous to begin with, their book is not going to age."

Slotnick also looks for "Thank God books," as in, "Thank God—why hasn't anyone ever done this before?" Bruce Cost's Asian Ingredients (Morrow, 1988; Perennial, 2000), a guide to buying and cooking with Asian ingredients, elicited this response from her when it first appeared.

A "thank God" book for Nach Waxman is Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini (Morrow, 2001) by Elizabeth Schneider, who, he says, writes about food and its qualities so beautifully that "she's the only person I know who can use words to tell you what something tastes like. That's beyond brilliant." If he could, he says, he would pass a law that there had to be a book like Schneider's on every kind of food.

Julia, Julia

The line between American and French cooking was first blurred by the inimitable Julia Child. "All of Julia's books must be in a serious culinary library," says Lisa Ekus of Lisa Ekus Public Relations, which devotes all its resources to books about food. "For reference, for learning, for inspiration, for cooking. Certainly her Masteringthe Art of French Cooking books [Knopf] but also The Way to Cook [Knopf, 1989]." Ekus balked at singling out indispensable cookbooks on the grounds that it was like asking her to pick a favorite child, but she came up with a long list, including Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) and Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible (Morrow, 1988), her two failsafe dessert books.

The important—and wonderful—thing about Julia Child, says Waxman, is that her Mastering the Art of French Cookingcould be titled simply The Art of Cooking. "It uses French as a starting point but it teaches how to cook and work with food products," he says. "You learn about the character of asparagus and how it's properly prepared. If you use asparagus as a springboard, my three favorite books—Elizabeth Schneider on vegetables; Anne Willan's La Varenne Pratique [Clarkson Potter, 1989], a practical book about handling food and knowing what it's all about; and Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking—could teach you to become an asparagus genius. None of them is just feeding you recipes. Rather, they help you understand the product you're working with."

"Julia Child is still our number-one bestselling author," says Susan Crittenden at Powell's, noting that the classics are usually too complicated for novices. "If someone wants a Mexican cookbook, we don't recommend Diana Kennedy. If someone wants more authentic Mexican dishes, we'll guide them to her, and if they want someone from the past 10 years, we'll recommend Rick Bayless."

"There's almost no way you can go wrong with Julia Child or Jacques Pepin," says Michael Handal, program director at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. "They just love to teach." Handal, a food classicist (code word for a French focus), says his favorites after them are Larousse Gastronomique(Clarkson Potter rev. edition, 2001), Escoffier's The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cooking (Wiley), The Escoffier Cookbook (Crown's abridged version) and Escoffier interpreters, either La Repertoire de la Cuisine by Louis Saulnier (Barron's) for professional chefs, or The Food Lover's Companion, Third Edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst (Barron's) for home chefs. When it comes to understanding the art and science of cooking, i.e., why eggs firm up when you cook them, Handal's favorite is Shirley Corriher's Cookwise (Morrow, 1997), which explains everything and includes recipes.

Barnes & Noble cookbook buyer Maria Hoffman admits that the chain's bestselling cookbooks are by personalities on Food TV (such as Rachael Ray and Paula Deen), but she lavishes praise on Nigella Lawson's books (How to Eat, How to Be a Domestic Goddess) and on Julia: "The Way to Cook is her best, and underrated," she says.

Beyond Good Writing

Wonderful prose, fine dishes, intriguing food lore and a winning voice are not the end all and be all of cookbooks. Many are valued for the ability to teach as much as to delight. Eve Felder, associate dean for culinary studies at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., says she doesn't look at the new crop of books hoping for a classic, but she thinks young chefs should keep abreast of what's out there, in order to build their libraries. Felder's all-time favorite book is Escoffier, but she also considers The Professional Chef, 7th edition(Wiley), indispensable for serious cooks. The book, produced by the CIA and used there as a basic text, is organized by technique: poaching, braising, roasting. "We use it to train people who want to be chefs. If you don't know how to cook bones to make a perfect stock, you're not going to make good soup."

Kimberly Yorio, a partner in the New York City food-focused PR agency YC Media, says that she's "a huge fan of technique cookbooks." In addition to the pantheon of chefs already mentioned, Yorio includes on her list All About Braising by Molly Stevens (Norton, 2004) and The Thrillof the Grill by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby (Morrow, 1990). About the latter, she says, "After you read that book, any other on grilling feels derivative."

Not everyone agrees on this last point. Steven Raichlen's How to Grill (Workman, 2001) and The Barbecue! Bible (Workman, 1998) came in for their share of kudos. Scott Ferguson, cookbook buyer for Borders, calls Raichlen "the overwhelming favorite in the area," as does Pat Adrian, editor-in-chief of the Good Cook club. "Grilling is huge," she says.

Faith in the Classics

Jan Longone, curator of American culinary history at the University of Michigan, says she never pays attention to new cookbooks. "I would never buy a book by a famous chef with an expensive kitchen. You can't duplicate those meals. My stove doesn't heat up as high. My ingredients are not as good. I don't use truffle oil. Celebrity chefs are scary. People buy the name and then never use the book." When she wants to figure out what to cook, she says, she looks to Julia Child, The Joy of Cooking, the old Gourmet Cookbooks and Craig Claiborne.

Books are reminders, says Eve Felder. "What are the ingredients of a soubise? What did Escoffier say? We want them not to follow a recipe, but to see what they say."

As with a good novel, what we want from our cookbooks are authoritative voices discoursing with vivid imagination about important things—in this case, food. As with good nonfiction, we want to have our curiosity sated about something that interests us; along the way, we want to learn how to do something, even if we never do whip up a soubise.

Click here for an extended roundup of upcoming cookbooks.