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Hi,
The Essential New York Times Cookbook is not just an update of past NY Times cookbooks. The author pays tribute to Claiborne's book in her introduction, and also states that his book covered a decade of his food coverage. Her book covers 150 years of recipes in the Times.

To start the process, she asked readers for their favorite recipes. She received over 6000 recipes! She sorted through these and tested 400 of them - these went back to the late 1950's. Then she went through the previous 100 years. The earlier recipes were submitted by readers, and she states that some of them would be the "equivalent of today's 'power users'".

The book serves as a history of food in America, and just reading it is quite fascinating. Hesser has done an excellent job of editing and culling the recipes, and selecting a wide variety of recipes to include. She joked that she could have easily written a "dessert and chicken" cookbook, as many of the recipes submitted fell into these two categories. She took care to give a wide range of recipes.

As I just received my copy, I haven't tried any of the recipes yet. However, this is definitely a cookbook that I will be using. There are many, many recipes I would like to try. The reviews of the book and recipes have been full of praise and it has been given outstanding ratings.

I hope this helps some.

Mari

I own the book and was happy to see it indexed! I used it just the other night to make a scallop pan roast, like the ones they make at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York. Yum! Easy and delicious.

I agree that the book contains a lot of history, which is fascinating, but also lots of recipes, which is useful! The New York Times is where I go to "when in doubt" about finding a recipe, with its shelf of cookbooks available. I like the Jean Hewitt New York Times Heritage Cookbook, which contains a lot of historical and regional recipes, especially Southern ones. Of course, the New York Times has also published both a Chicken and a Dessert Cookbook, and they should be fairly easy to find if you don't already own them!