Australian Classic: The Commonsense Cookery Book
Vintage Image Reprint for a Practical Guide to Home Cooking
Oct 30, 2008
First published in 1914, The Commonsense Cookery Book has enjoyed success for almost 100 years with more than one million copies sold. A first step-by-step cookbook for many generations, The Commonsense Cookery Book (HarperCollins, 2008) still has something to offer for modern Australian households.
The current edition has been revised and updated by Gail Clarkson, Heather Crawford, Veronica Cuskelly and Jill Murphy for the Home Economics Institute of Australia, NSW Division.
The Commonsense Cookery Book
Offering a practical approach to cooking missing in so many modern cookbooks, The Commonsense Cookery Book is ideal for beginners and as a basic kitchen reference. While the new edition has been updated slightly to reflect Australian Nutritional Guidelines, it maintains the no-nonsense, practical layout and content that has made it so enduringly popular.
In addition to the nutritional updates, the new edition is presented in a 13 x 19 cm classic hardcover style with black material binding and a bold red cover with black print. The index has also been updated with a more user-friendly organisation to facilitate finding the desired recipe quickly and easily.
Kitchen Basics for Beginners
Fans of The Commonsense Cookery Book will be delighted to discover that some of the more endearing features of the cookbook, such as the inclusion of “a reliable stove” in the list of basic kitchen requirements, remain unchanged. This no-assumptions approach ensures that no matter what the skill level of the reader, The Commonsense Cookery Book is able to provide suitable information.
Recipes such as how to scramble or poach eggs or how to boil rice will be unnecessarily basic for many, but will enable new cooks to start with fundamental kitchen skills before moving on to everyday and then more complex recipes. Other assistance for beginner cooks includes a list of definitions for commonly used cooking terms, tips for basic microwave use and temperature and measurement conversions charts.
More advanced cooks will also benefit from the summary of basic cuts of beef, pork and lamb as well as a chart outlining appropriate methods of cooking the various cuts. This chart includes cooking time and temperature for each cookery method as well as a listing of traditional accompaniments. Other cooking basics include preparing a white or cheese sauce and basic cooking and preparation methods for a variety of vegetables and salads.
A Complete Kitchen Resource
In addition to the fundamental kitchen skills and recipes, The Commonsense Cookery Book offers a range of recipes suitable for everyday family meals including:
- stocks and soups
- meat, poultry and fish dishes
- vegetables, salads and salad dressings
- scone and loaf mixtures, breads and yeast cookery
- puddings, pastry, cakes, biscuits and slices
- jams, jellies, sauces, gravy, pickles and chutney
- sweets and confectionary
Recipes are presented in a clear, numbered step format with no illustrations and the page layout has been improved to offer a less cluttered appearance. The new layout allows plenty of room for cooks to make personal notes as they experiment with recipes.
An Australian Classic offering a Practical Approach to Cooking
The Commonsense Cookery Book is an ideal gift for anyone leaving home for the first time or for a teen learning to cook. It offers a comprehensive range of recipes for home cooks with basic to moderate cooking skills and is a perfect resource for those wishing to develop skills with a range of fundamental recipes.
The Commonsense Cookery Book (ISBN: 978-0-7322-8799-3, 378 pages)
