The classic guide to classical cuisine. Now updated to include other cuisines besides French, and some more contemporary recipes. Learn how to make classic French dishes like souffles, pates and terrines, roast meats with thick, flavorful sauces, etc. Recipes are not written for beginner cooks – they are very brief, and a knowledge of numerous cooking techniques is required. If you can cook from this book though, you’ll definitely turn a few heads.

Harold McGee’s big book of food science. It’s not exactly the book you want to read before bed, but there’s a wealth of food-related chemistry, biology, and physics here, some of which could improve your cooking and awareness of all that goes on in the kitchen.

If you read this book cover to cover, unless you’re fascinated with all things food science, you’ll probably find a large portion of the matter completely irrelevant to your cooking. For example, in the first chapter a history of raising rudiments (cows, sheep, etc) for dairy is given, dating back to prehistoric times. However, this is an invaluable reference for the times when you just need to understand what’s going on in a recipe or procedure, or to see the logic behind a technique.

My go-to book for impromptu, recipe-free cooking. This book explores flavor affinities, i.e. which ingredients go well with other ingredients. For each ingredient, there is a list of other ingredients that will combine well with it. For example, you’ve got some crisp, green asparagus, the first of the season. They’re beautiful, but you can’t decide how to serve them. So you look up “asparagus” in the Flavor Bible, and read through its list. Oh, mushrooms, that sounds good. And heavy cream. Oh of course, soft-poached eggs. In no time at all, you end up with a delicious dish of sauteed asparagus and mushrooms with a cream sauce, topped off with a delicious poached egg.

This book is tons of fun for exploring connections between ingredients and coming up with new dishes. Also invaluable when you want to clear out the pantry but are at a loss for ideas. Also includes lots of interesting quotes from interviews with chefs around the country.