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I'm curious.  If you had to give up all of your cookbooks but one, which one book would you find indespensible and why?

I have a few that I feel I couldn't live without, but I'll pick one after others weigh in.  (I hate to ask and answer my own queston and kill the thread.)

I couldn't live without my Better Homes and Garden even though it's old. I always use it as a backup to other books and for references.

My current favorite because I find myself turning to it again and again each week for side dishes as well as main course is 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer. As a result, I mix curries into all sorts of menus.

My most-used cookbook is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Its name says it all!

Mine is a well-worn copy of The Joy of Cooking.  Although I don't make a lot of actual recipes from it, it's my go-to for reference. 

I suppose if I were a little younger, I might use Bitman's book for that, but when I was learning to cook, Bitman wasn't writing!  Old habits die hard, so I still grab Joy when I'm looking for informtion.

Interestingly, my mother used BH&G as her first source, and I find that I still use it frequently (but not as much as Joy).

Probably Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, which I use as reference even when making recipes from other cookbooks. With more than 650 recipes, it is compendious enough to cover many national cuisines and a wide variety of ingredients.

For me it's a toss-up between Silver Palate, Joy of Cooking, The Settlement Cookbook & Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts (or any others by Heatter)! For more traditional cooking & cooking questions I turn to Joy of Cooking or The Settlement Cookbook, for more modern cooking I turn to Silver Palate, and for baking, Heatter is the best!

I'm gping to add any of Ina Garten's books. Her recipes are failproof and excellent.

Interesting question! I collect mostly vintage cookbooks (although lately, I've picked up quite a few modern ones), so my answer is weighted toward the older cookbooks.

If I had to choose just one, it would probably be The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook (c. 1950) - it's the one on my shelf with the most slips of paper marking pages with recipes I use often. ;) It also has plenty of general cooking and baking information - truly an "encyclopedic" cookbook.

Oh YES!!!  If I could live on baked goods, Maida Heatter would be the only book I'd need also.

Unfortunately, I have to eat other things.................I'd still keep my Joy.

I love The Doubleday Cookbook (1975) which I found used on Amazon. It seems to have everything I cook these days. I also love Fannie Farmer.

This is a tough question and I suspect that my answer would change from year to year. Right now, though, the book I'm using the most is Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison -- and I'm NOT a Vegetarian!

Another Mark Bittman fan here. How to Cook Everything, it's my go to book.

Oh golly, the thought of having to give up all my cookbooks except one makes me dizzy, but if the house were on fire, I'd grab Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini (William Morrow, 2001).  In my family, we like to say we're not vegetarians, we're vegetabelarians, enthusiastic eaters of vegetables.  Elizabeth empowers us in our quest to eat more and yet more vegetables.  And she writes so well that I read the book for pleasure as well as information.

I hope lots of other people chip in -- it's fascinating to read about everybody's favorites.

xxx

If I get only one, it has to be The Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon.  But can't also keep Jack Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.  Please, pretty please.

If I were packing for an extended stay on a deserted island (one with an excellently stocked grocery store, of course) and could take only one cookbook, I'd be hard-pressed to choose between a cookbook like Charmaine Solomon's  The complete Asian cookbook and an encyclopedic baking book--I haven't encountered the perfect baking encyclopedia yet, so can't mention a specific title.

The book I have been using most often for the last year and a half is Madhur Jaffrey's From curries to kebabs--it gets pressed into service at least once a week if not more. But it is too limited in scope to be my single cookbook.

I would go with a Joy of Cooking circa 1960s, my wife with Child's Mastering the Art. Vol I. 

We have had this discussion before.

Simply French - Patricia Wells or

The Splendid Table - the original, not the recent book

That's a tough question... I love my books so much. But I'm gonna cast another vote for Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. I'm not even a vegetarian, but I really find that book so useful. I have many vegetable books, but that one tends to be where I look first.