The cookbooks we can't cook without

What makes a great cookbook? An easier question nowadays is what doesn't make a great cookbook.

The flood of coffee-table food porn currently in vogue is undoubtedly beautiful, but how many of us have ever been brave enough to cook something out of Thomas Keller's "Bouchon"?

Restaurant cooks once remained in their kitchens, while cookbooks were written by experienced kitchen matrons and food writers — compilations of acquired wisdom and techniques, and foolproof recipes.  Julia Child based 1961's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" on her skills running a cooking school, not a restaurant. When Craig Claiborne published "The New York Times Cookbook" the same year, he was a food editor, not a four-star chef with a six-figure book deal.

But the cult of celebrity had to feast sometime. With the rise of American haute cuisine came the advent of the chef as icon. Some chefs have undoubtedly produced masterworks of their own, but more often the modern celebrity-driven cookbook is a glossy marketing tool and a monument to ego, filled with recipes intended for a kitchen full of culinary-school graduates. Books by chefs, for chefs — the rest of us be damned.

“Somebody's dinner party is at stake,” says Melissa Clark, an award-winning author of cookbooks with big-name chefs like David Bouley, “and many of them don't care.”

In response, Clark recently released her own cookbook, "Chef, Interrupted" (Clarkson Potter, $32.50), a sort of translation guide that reconfigures signature dishes of over 50 chefs for the home kitchen.

Not that she's referring to her collaborators when she describes chefs' often dismissive attitudes, but after having a hand in 16 cookbooks, Clark views modern cookbook publishing as an unfortunate collision of kitchen-fueled ego, cynical publishers and hasty (or nonexistent) recipe testing.

Another factor is in play: the slow death of Americans' cooking skills. "The next generation can't say, ‘I learned this at my mother's knee,’” says Clark. "They'll say, ‘I learned this at Rachael Ray's knee.’”

All this led us to think about our favorite cookbooks — the ones we use every week, the ones with grease stains, dogeared pages and note-filled margins. The ones, frankly, that make the best gifts for food lovers. 

These are books we couldn't cook without.      —Jon Bonné

Does it have a Book of Brioche?
If you’re going to call your book the “Bible” of anything, it had better be thorough, and Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Bread Bible” (Norton, $35) lives up to its name. Chapter one of the 600-plus-page book covers tips on every step of the baking process. Levy Beranbaum also includes a list of bread glazes that I find so useful I taped the list inside my cupboard. Recipe favorites include her cinnamon crumb surprise, with a hidden layer of yummy apples as the surprise; delightful crumpets and English muffins; and the only ciabatta recipe that I will ever use. I doubt I will ever work my way through the whole book, but it’s certainly fun trying.

The best and the bestest
If I were buying cookbooks for a novice cook, I’d choose two: Ann Hodgman’s “Beat This!” (Houghton Mifflin, $16) and “Beat That!” (Houghton Mifflin, $15). I first came across Hodgman’s delightfully funny food writing in Spy Magazine (she once taste-tested pet foods). The foods are often simple — brownies, lasagna, macaroni and cheese — but she brags that they’re the absolute best of their breed. The introductions to each recipe are hilarious and inspiring. She brags: “[Crocked shrimp dip] stands loftily upon the shoulders of all the other dips, gazing out into the sunset or whatever.” The two books even try to one-up each other — in “Beat This!” she offers a guacamole recipe she thought the absolute best … until she found the one she offers in “Beat That!”

Simplicity reigns
Some cookbooks are all business, but Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen” (Harper Perennial, $12) collects Colwin’s entertaining food essays, with the recipes almost secondary. Her calm, friendly tone reassures novices that it’s OK if you don’t own a food mill, and that you can make rising bread conform to your schedule instead of vice-versa. She’s kind of like a Food Whisperer, coaxing those of us who’ve been burned back into the kitchen, holding the reins gently and offering plenty of encouragement. (If you make only one recipe from “Home Cooking,” let it be her famed gingerbread.) Colwin died in 1992 when she was just 48, and reading her essays makes her loss ring all the harder.    –Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Books and TV editor.

MORE FROM HOLIDAY SHOPPING

Move over Elmo: Hot holiday toys

Move over Elmo: Hot holiday toys Shop and do good: Gift that give to needy Video: Holiday toys for little ones Video: Fight urge to spend too much on gifts Movies for people who hate Christmas Quiz: Test your holiday movie knowledge The 12 rentals of Christmas   Add Holiday shopping headlines to your news reader: