Easy to follow, beautiful recipes, great recommendations to improve your chances of a lovely meal. A classic!

This is a must have for foodies. I love love love this cookbook. The best cookbook I have ever purchased.

A lot of the reviewers complain about the yellow titles, but I didn't find them a problem at all, the yellow is dark enough to make them readable for me.

Haven't used it yet, got one for my sister as we were always fans of Gourmet.

When I first flipped through this cookbook, it seemed like it would be the perfect 'special occasion' cookbook. I cook almost every day, and I would not call myself boring or traditional either. I wouldn't even consider myself someone who is 'short on time' and in need of some kind of 'quickie' recipe. However, I will never come home on a Wednesday night and whip up a nice Pistachio-Crusted Arctic Char. This book is great--for special occasion cooking. I recently cooked a French dinner for my mother's husband. I followed the three recipies I chose word for word, and the meal was perfect--despite the fact that I had never made or even tasted the dishes before. It took me seven hours to make--but if you are going to spend hours slaving away at the stove to make a wonderful holiday meal for your family, you might as well make sure the result is worth the effort. This book ensures that all of your hard work will not go unappreciated. In addition, while some reviews seem to be negative about the layout of the book, if you simply use the index in the back instead of the rather general table of contents, you will find it more than user friendly.

Well, Reichl is wonderful so this had to be a great book but it is also simple and has loads of new ideas.

The book offers a good variety of options and is well organized for easy access to specific foods. I like the chef's comments attached to many of the recipes. I would love to compare to the other three books we ordered over a month ago from Amazon, but they still have not shipped. Book is very good, Amazon delivery performance is very bad on this order.

This cookbook is fantastic!!! Every dish I have made has been wonderful. Some are simple, some are complicated, and all of the instructions are very clear. I often start with ingredients I already have, and have always found something delicious!!

I absolutely love this cookbook. Not only are the recipes fantastic, each indicates how much time you will spend making the dish- from active time to total time. If you could only have one cookbook in your kitchen, this is the one to have... I call it "my yellow bible of cooking"!

The book contains easy to follow instructions, helpful tips, down to earth ingredients in 90% of recepes, and informative introduction to every recepe! When I follow strictly all instructions and use the exact ingredients, I get very tasty results! Thank you to the magazine's staff!

This is a fine book, but not earth shattering. I have a few favorites I've made more than once and it's good to look through for inspiration but it is defintely not a must have like Bittman's How To COok Everything or Joy of Cooking. Also, some of the recipes seem a little dated -not as in "retro" but cool, but rather food trends that are 5 or 10 years old and weren't very interesting to begin with.

I have at the least 500 cookbooks and this is the cookbook I use the most
it is easy to understand, it has a good variety of receipes and you don't have to go to a gourmet food store for the ingredients, for the most part you probably have the ingredients in your pantry.

After I ordered this book, I read the reviews. I know, not the best sequence of events, but that is the way that I am. Leap first, then worry about the water in the pool. Anyway, just about every review I read complained about the colors on the pages being very difficult to read.
What good is a cookbook that you are unable to read?
Rest assured that the color problem is no longer a problem.
I find the pages a joy to read. Clear and very straight-forward. I am not a gourmet cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy a culinary experiment and I am looking forward to attacking the recipes in this book with the same abandon that I attack everything else.
I heartly reccomend this book to everyone that enjoys cooking, if for no other reason than to surprise the heck out of your signifigant other. They will love the results too.

With over 1000 recipes, this cookbook is going to take some time to truly put through it's paces, but I've had great results with the few dishes I've tried so far. The Turkey Wraps with Chipotle Mayo rocked, with a gem of a condiment included - pickled red onion. I'd use that on any sandwich, anytime. The sauces for Halibut with Spicy Asian Vinaigrette (really a sambal vinaigrette) and Wasabi Cream were awesome. Veggie dishes like Asparagus with Shallot and sesame seeds add a special touch to everyday dinners.

Granted, I haven't even put a dent in the vast amount of dishes represented in this massive cookbook - but so far so good! I picked this up a few months agao as a remainder and paid about 10.00 for it - about a penny a recipe! What a deal!

I recently moved to Mexico, and as weight and customs tariffs limited my importation of books, I chose this cookbook to be my overall basic resource. I have been glad ever since that I left my "Joy" behind, along with my "Best of Cooks Illustrated" and the Childs volumes. Unlike B. Marold, I have not been disappointed by any of the recipes I've tried, and I've been delighted to find so many of them to be Latin or Caribbean themed, so that I can use the products most readily available here yet branch out from the usual Mexican fare. To complain that the omelet-making or brioche-making techniques are not what they would be in a teaching volume is to ask more of this compendium than what it is: the best recipes published in Gourmet Magazine, period. I find the sidebars useful and the unfortunate yellow titles a minor irritant. The index is excellent, which is not often the case with cookbooks. Everything for which I've needed a recipe I've found in one way or another through it. Try the Cuban Roast Pork Loin; the Avocado, Orange, and Jicama Salad; the Beets with Lime Butter! My only complaint is that several times I've proceeded with a recipe and added all of an ingredient only to discover that some of that ingredient was to be saved for a later step. I've since learned to read more carefully through a recipe before plunging in.

I love this cookbook. It is exceptionally well indexed with so many recipes that I can invariably find one that fits the items in my refrigerator or pantry. The recipes are easy, even for an average cook. The preparation time listed for each recipe is right on target. For example, the fruit crumble really DOES take only 15 minutes (and tastes like something I would be happy to pay for at a restaurant) and the blender hollandaise really does work in a snap. It has become the cookbook I use 90% of the time. It's true it has no pictures, but given the choice between recipes and images, I would take the former any day.

With this book and a little practice, your friends with want to know who your chef is.

This book is a great reference for every day and every `special' day that you need or want to cook. Recipes and techniques from the very basic to the very advanced are broken down into layman's terms, clearly explained and easy to locate. If you don't want an entire cookbook library, this should be one of the few cookbooks you get.

Every recipe I try is really delicious except for a cookie recipe with chocolate chips and lots of dried fruit. The best biscuits in the world are on page 526.

I think the use of yellow titles is a deplorable idea. An earlier reviewer suggested using a blue highlighter on the horribly pale yellow type. I tried that and the title completely disappeared - now there is only a blue highlight line.

When I open a cookbook, I want to cook - not to come up with creative ways to fix a major publishing error.

A passionate home cook that has been honing her cooking skills for the last 25 years, concentrating on Italian cooking for the last 10 years, writes this review. My favorite cookbooks are "The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute and "Culinary Artistry". With more than 500 cookbooks in my collection I am usually disappointed in my recent cookbook acquisitions. This book is exactly what you expect it to be. It is a vast collection of almost any recipe that you will ever want to prepare. I have been very pleased with the thoroughness of the editors in regard to what they included in this book.

According to the editor, the goal of the book was to give the reader every recipe they could ever want in one volume. I have tried to use the book as a reference manual to see if they achieved their stated goal. In the nine months that I have owned this book it has contained a version of every recipe that I have searched for except for recipes for fiddlehead ferns. Given the obscure nature of fiddlehead ferns as an ingredient, I did not consider that omission a significant issue.

The editor subdivided the book as follows:

Hor d`oeuveres and first courses
Soups
Salads
Sandwiches and Pizza
Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings
Grains and Beans
Fish and Shellfish
Poultry
Beef, Veal, Pork and Lamb
Vegetables
Breads and Crackers
Breakfast and Brunch
Cookies, Bars and Confections
Cakes
Pies, Tarts, and Pastries
Fruit Desserts
Puddings, Custards, Mousses, and Souffles
Frozen Desserts and Sweet Sauces
Sauces and Salsas
Relishes, Chutneys, Pickles, and Preserves
Basics

I have been thoroughly satisfied with each recipe that I have prepared. I was particularly pleased with the recipe for baked potato chips, which are much easier to make than I expected. The bread section is very well done. I enjoy baking bread and find this chapter to be as good as any of my bread cookbooks. The directions are very detailed and well written. If you pick up a copy of this book I highly recommend the Mustard and Cheese cracker recipe on page 604. These have been a real winner in my home. The recipe for Maple Mustard-Glazed Canadian Bacon on page 658 is so exceptionally good that it should be illegal. From a purely Italian perspective, the Mortadella and Truffle Stuffed Pork Loin with Rosemary Roast Potatoes was absolutely amazing.

I have read other reviews that commented on the yellow text and feel that I should clarify. The name of each recipe is written in a sort of mustard yellow color, but the remainder of the recipe is black font on white paper. My 44-year-old eyes have had no difficulty reading the recipe names. I do not find this mustard yellow text to be a problem. I would suggest that you take a look at the inside of the book in a bookstore before deciding not to buy this book. The recipes that I have tried have all been dead on in terms of directions and taste. I think this book is much better than the "Joy of Cooking" or "The New York Times Cookbook". I would highly recommend this book to any foodie that is looking for a compendium of must have recipes.

I was very disappointed in the book which I received as a Christmas gift. I, too, dislike the light yellow print which is a strain on older eyes! It is difficult to find the recipe on the page because of it. This might seem trivial to some; but, to others it is a real pain. Also, the recipes are nothing special. I am glad that I did not pay for this book.

I am very disappointed with this book! Where are the pictures of some of the recipes? The price of this book, there should be photos of how to do something not bad drawings! I found the intro to be a waste of paper also, those pictures in the hard to see yellow/orange print could of gone behind the text. I have yet to make anything from this book that turned out, which is wierd because I can make the stuff from Gourmet Magazine with no problems! I especially do not like reading a recipe that is turned complicated because they have to be over the top with the wording! I cannot believe I paid for this book!

I bought this book with big aspirations of another "Joy of Cooking" with a little upscale to it. While I must say the design of the book is fabulous (I am a graphic designer and truly love the cookbook's design), the recipes leave much to pine for. I don't like that most of the ingredients are nothing I normally keep in the house and I am not likely to use often enough to warrant purchasing them. I have yet to actually cook a meal from it for this reason and I have owned the book for over a year. I will stick to "Joy of Cooking" for it is much more of a tool in the kitchen.

I think anyone serious about good food would rate this book highly. I borrowed a copy from my local library and within days I had bought a copy myself. I bought this book as I was tired of eating average meals every night. With a little effort (and some require little and others a bit more time) you can enjoy your meals every day. Possibly the buyers who rated this book poorly do not have the patience or the passion to cook really good food. (I enjoy the cooking as well as the eating of meals.) As someone else mentioned, this is a book I too would now buy for friends and family as a gift.

Yes, the yellow printing is not a plus in this "best-of-the-best" collection from the pages of Gourmet magazine, but once you get past that, you'll find blissfully delicious recipes that are within the skill of the family chef.

Despite the wide-spectrum collection of cookbooks that fill my kitchen shelves, I often experiment, putting together dishes on whim and instinct. But on those occasions when I want something spectacular, why re-invent the wheel?

I appreciate the clear directions in this book. When you need an unusual pan or an exotic ingredient, you will be alerted before you begin. With the inexhaustible variety of dishes presented here, Ruth Reichl and company have put together a valuable addition to your culinary repertoire.

This is an excellent cookbook. We have tried many of the recipes all with outstanding results. I have purchased it as a gift for several people who have also appreciated it's qualities.

The Gourmet Cookbook:
More than 1000 recipes,
Over 60 Years in the Making
Edited by Ruth Reichl

In this reviewer's opinion, this book is a five-star source for this time's foods - a feast and a joy. How can you lose? It's recipes used over the years by one of our most prestigious food publications, "60 Years of `Gourmet'" magazine. Ruth Reichl and her staff poured over 50,000 recipes as they strove to make selections. The tome is 1152 pages with 1283 recipes and no pictures to take up space. Everyone of them is interesting. If you are going the cookbook route with a wedding gift, this book will last for them.

Referring to the content of the book, Reichl states, "Without them, the magazine - and the book -would not exist," Best of all these have been professionally tested and perfected. The collection is very worldly, very "today."

The recipes singled out below are by no means the best, they are merely randomly chosen and svery interesting:

Charred Tomatillo Guacamole -
Round up red onion, Serrano chiles, cilantro and avocados

Baked Cheddar Olives -
A little flour, cayenne and butter make these happen.

Shrimp Dumplings with Dipping Sauce -
Gather up water chestnuts, egg white, scallions, fresh ginger, soy sauce, wonton wrappers, sugar and a little vegetable oil.

Chilled Buttermilk Soup with Beets, Cucumber, Radishes and Dill -
Work in sour cream and serve cold.

Broccoli, Red Pepper and Cheddar Chowder -
Calls for potato, butter, onion, garlic, cumin, dry mustard, flour and cream.

Baked Four-Cheese Farfalle -
Work with butter, flour, milk, tomatoes, mozzarella, Gorgonzola, Fontina, pecorino Romany and flat-leaf parsley

Risotto with Peas and Prosciuto -
Combine stock, butter, onion, Arborio rice, white wine, lemon zest, grated Parmigiano Reggiano and parsley.

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic -
Just assemble seasoning, parsley, rosemary, theyme, sage and by leaf.

Flank Steak with Chimichurri -
For the steak: kosher salt, cumin and coriander. For the sauce: garlic, cilantro, parsley, white vinegar, olive oil and cayenne.

Bok Choy with Soy Sauce and Butter (regular or baby size) -
Make this with water, soy sauce, oyster sauce, vegetable oil and butter.

Baked Belgian Endive with Pecorino and Walnuts -
Just combine these with olive oil and seasoning.

Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Shallots -
Use Yukon Gold potatoes with butter and seasoning.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Spinach with Toasted Almond Dressing -
This calls for olive oil, seasoning and lemon juice

Cranberry Ketchup --
Use onion, water, orange zest, brown sugar, granulated sugar and Chinese Five-Spice Powder.

Quick Dilled Cucumber Pickles -
Round up kosher salt, cider vinegar, sugar, dry mustard and bottled horseradish

Cinnamon Chocolate Cigarettes -
Use egg whites, confectioner's sugar, flour and butter. Wrap around a pencil.

Sesame Honey Lace Cookies -
Call for confectioner's sugar, butter, water and flour.

Dark Chocolate Shortbread -
Assemble superfine sugar, vanilla extract and flour

Vinegar Pie -
Simply eggs, sugar flour and cinnamon

Berry Tart with Mascarpone Cream -
Have heavy cream, sugar, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, orange marmalade and dark berry liqueur or crème de cassis ready

Baked Figs with Grand Marnier and Whipped Cream -
Assemble sugar, water and heavy cream

Banana Fritters -
Just sugar, water, cornflakes light rum and lime juice

Cream Cheese Ice Cream -
Besides an ice cream maker, use whole milk, lemon juice, sugar, heavy cream and vanilla extract

Reviewed, Marty Martindale, owner of FOOD SITE OF THE DAY.

This is an extraordinary cookbook for the aspiring home cook that practices cookery out of passion and not necessity. I am not surprised with the negative feedback received from several reviewers and say to them next time just stick to Betty Crocker recipes.

The author has successfully compiled an interesting repertoire of recipes and at the same time packed the pages with useful tips and information that will help the reader acquire new skills and gain knowledge casually. For example page 527 is devoted to a detailed explanation on how to properly chop an onion. You would be surprised on how few people know how to do this task properly in order to deliver a consistent cut, faster than 123. It is simple tasks and information that the author has added to the pages that add value to this 1000 page book that make it indispensable for any aspiring cook.

As far as the yellow headings go...give me a break

I cannot believe this cookbook is only rated 3 1/2 stars overall.
This is an extraordinary cookbook, every single recipe I have made so far has been outstanding.
It is my new kitchen reference: most of the recipes, although delicious and sometimes impressive, are easily put together; it is so well organized I have decided to rearrange my own (scarily large) recipe collection along the same lines; and the index comes in very handy when you're looking for something to make with what's already in your fridge...
I also very much enjoy the little blurbs introducing each recipe, as well as the notes regarding advance preparation and conservation.

i was given this cookbook with great fanfare and have tried a few recipes - all are overly complicated. This does not seem to be a cookbook for someone wanting to make a nice meal in a reasonable amount of time. All the fussing is not for me.

I stumbled across the Gourmet Cookbook while looking for another cookbook that currently reigns on the bestseller list. After perusing the Gourmet Cookbook, I knew I had to buy this gem! Usually, I find one or two tempting recipes in a cookbook, surrounded by many, many other dishes that I would never prepare. The Gourmet Cookbook surprised me with a delicious sounding recipe on every single page, and there are a lot of pages in this weighty tome. In addition to new presentations, I found a recipe for every single dish I had longed to make, but couldn't find in my other cookbooks- everything from Palak Paneer to Lemon Curd.
Once I started cooking with this book, I was delighted to find that "gourmet" is not synonymous with complicated. All the dishes I have tried so far have been simple to make, and some are very, very quick. I made a delectable grouper with tomato and basil that was done, from prep time to finish, in under 15 minutes! And I used the leftovers the next day to make the most insanely tasty fish tacos in about 10 minutes.
I was concerned that it would be difficult to get such a thick book to lay open for reading while cooking, but this has been no trouble at all. The only downside to this book is that the recipe titles are printed in yellow, which makes them difficult to read in certain light. But this is a minor point in such valuable culinary compendium.
This book has become one of my prized possessions and has reinvigorated my cooking. I highly recommend the Gourmet Cookbook to every chef, from novice to expert.

Their Tarte Tatin recipe calls for a total of 65+ minutes cooking time. I ended up with burned applesauce. Other recipes I tried have been similarly unsuccessful or uninspired. This one will end up unused on the shelf. I have been much happier with "The New Best Recipe" from Cooks Illustrated which offers what I hoped The Gourmet Cookbook would: recipes that turn out beyond your expectations regardless of your level of expertise.

If you like Gourmet Magazine and like to cook, you'll love this book. I have not had it long enough to review it comprehensively so it may deserve 5 stars. It's also a fantastic gift for friends who like to cook -- you can't go wrong.

Fresh presentaions of classic recipes. Not so trendy that you will stop using it in a year.

Who knows more about food than Ruth Reichl? Not many people. She's compiled a tour de force of recipes. This is a 'must-have' for the cookbook library, extensive, thorough and instructive and great value for money. This must be an updated edition as the yellow-text problem has been cured and the design has been improved - I had no trouble reading it anyway. Great additional advice sections on boning ducks and the mysteries of the kitchen - very helpful.

For me, the true measure of a cookbook is how easy it is to follow the recipes and how tasty the resulting food is. This book easily fulfills both these criterias.

The recipes are easy to follow for modern cooks. The measurements are good (1 tsp instead of 1 1/8), the list of ingredients practical and seldom or never fussy, the tips include steps in the preparation that can be done in advance, and the procedure are streamlined and still sufficient (they don't shy from using ziploc, or blenders, or food processor).

Most importantly, the recipes work! The food i've made following the proportions and methods as written (most of the time) in the recipes have all been flavorful and a pleasure to serve and eat.

Some reviewers have judged this cookbook with out trying out any of the recipes in a kitchen. Huh?

I also noticed that their recipe may not be "traditional". One of the reviewers used the example of Chicken Adobo where they only use chicken legs instead fo the traditional whole chicken. Or their Tres Leches recipe included the use of the very untraditional coconut milk. To me these are innovations. Using a whole chicken for adobo is not great since some of the white meat will dry out during the cooking. And adding coconut milk to the tres leches made the cake divine.

This book brings joy to cooking (ha!)

The Good: a nearly 1000 page tome with a 1000 recipes that work
The Bad: a cookbook full of traditional recipes that have been "improved"
The Ugly: not sure (the cover is a hideous lemon-yellow; does that count?)

This book was released with big hoopla in 2004. This all-purpose cookbook is both very good and very disappointing. It is reliable, but more trendy than it is historically illuminating (the recipe selection is more akin to the last couple of years than earlier ones in its history). In the end, this cookbook is a pointless exercise; thumbs down unless you are already a fan of the magazine in its current incarnation. I believe that the appointment of the current editor of Gourmet was a mistake (it demonstrates the danger of giving preference to food journalists over battle-tested, seasoned foodservice professionals), as is this cookbook.

Gourmet magazine has been around since WW2. Be warned that this cookbook is not a collection of the best recipes to have ever appeared in the magazine, which is disappointing considering the historical archives available to the editors. The recipes chosen are only those that pass muster as current, trendy recipes that would be suitable for publication in a current issue of the magazine, or an old recipe that has been jazzed up. A whole galaxy of traditional, old-fashioned recipes is automatically excluded because they do not suit the editors' rather trendy tastes. In this case, I seriously question the editors' choices (to be fair, she does mention "negotiations" when it came to recipe selections; I suspect that the lead editor-who is relatively new to her job at Gourmet-had final say over the objections of other editors who have been with the magazine for more years), and the recipe selection would have been better left to a company historian. In terms of tinkering with standard recipes, the earlier chapters (appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, starch, grains, seafood, meat, vegetables) are more flagrant violators than the later ones (bread, brunch, cookies, cakes, pies, fruit, custards, ices, condiments).

On the other hand, I love cooking magazines because they have a fully staffed test kitchen, and all the recipes are tested, idiot-proof, and always work as advertised. I love their compendium cookbooks even more, because you get a cookbook full of recipes that actually work (I have many cookbooks authored by famous, celebrity super-chefs that are full of recipes that simply do not work). Here, you get a reliable, comprehensive cookbook full of dependable recipes. If you need that last minute recipe that absolutely must work, this is the book to use.

Another positive feature is that the authors are fastidious about listing the exact yield, active kitchen time, recipe duration, and storage information for each and every recipe. This is a feature I wish that more cookbook authors would emulate.

It has a few problems:
1) One major problem is the lack of organization. The Table of Contents lists each chapter title, but that is all. A listing of the chapter sub-divisions or a complete list of chapter recipes is lacking. This is a major deficiency, since many chapters are over 100 pages with over 100 recipes. So, to find anything, you either have to carefully comb through the index or flip your way through a 100 pages of text to get the recipe you need.
2) Also absent is a difficulty rating. Easy recipes are right next difficult ones requiring some culinary skill, but the text gives no warning.
3) Many recipes call for specialty gourmet ingredients that can be difficult to find (it would have been more useful if the editors had consciously limited the recipes to use only common, easily available ingredients). Worse, substitutes are rarely recommended.
4) It contains no information (except in a few scattered sidebars) on recommended kitchen tools, basic cooking techniques, or ingredients; it assumes you already know these things.
5) For Tarragon Lobster Salad, after boiling 4 live lobsters, you are admonished to "Discard tomalley, any roe, and shells". Excuse me?
6) Even familiar classics, have been tinkered with and updated (one has to admire the editors' gall, if nothing else).
7) The ingredients called for show a strong regional (NYC) prejudice.
8) each recipe has a nice preliminary description, but they often include phrases like: "new twist", "our updated version", "we lightened the dish", "contemporary", "we prefer", "adapted", "whole new dimension", "more robust", "but it's also fun to do something different", "taking an old classic to new heights", "a new, very appealing way", "our upscale, lightened take", "a novel and easy way", "a sophisticated spin", "unique", "we made a further innovation", "there's always room for improvement", "our variation", "a modern twist", "this lightened version", "these will surprise you", "they taste different too", "we've shaken things up a bit", "more refined than the original", "we think ours is the best", "we set out to improve the recipe", and "we've modernized it". The editor is clearly trying to re-invent the wheel. I heard an interview with Reichl about this book, and she bemoaned what a Herculean effort this book was (more than a year in development); it should have been a simple cut-and-paste affair, requiring little else besides little appreciative, editorial comments.
9) "crisp-tender" and "just tender": what exactly is the difference? The authors never describe what either term means.