The Cook's Bible takes the mystery out of preparing a great meal. What's the ideal ratio of oil to vinegar in a vinaigrette? Kimball gives you the answer: 4 1/2 to 1. What's the secret to perfect roast chicken? A 375(degree) oven and a 170(degree) internal temperature for the thigh. How about the toughest kitchen challenge of all, piecrust? Kimball makes it easy with the right ingredients (including Crisco and butter) and illustrated step-by-step instructions. For these and the rest of America's best-loved dishes - vegetable soup, poached salmon, roast beef, barbecued ribs, homemade pizza, waffles, chocolate chip cookies, and many others - Kimball has tested and retested to deliver the definitive recipes. In addition to these master recipes, Kimball also serves up a generous helping of appealing variations - nearly 450 recipes in all. Throughout, Kimball elucidates kitchen procedures - butterflying a chicken, for instance, or dicing an onion - with more than 250 beautifully rendered step-by-step illustrations. And he also provides lucid guidance on what kitchen equipment you need and what you can live without - a microwave oven is optional, but good knives are essential - including brand names, model numbers, and prices. From recipes to techniques to equipment, here is a one-volume master class in American home cookery, a cooking school in print for beginners and experienced cooks alike. Kimball was the founding editor of the original, much-loved Cook's magazine, which he revived several years ago as Cook's Illustrated. Here he offers his culinary knowledge in 50 chapters, from What To Buy for the Kitchen to Baked Fruit Desserts, with dozens of photographs and step-by-step line drawings. The approach follows that of the magazine, where, for example, chicken may be roasted 15 different ways to determine "the best" way to cook it, or 40 batches of chocolate chip cookies are baked to find "the best" recipe. Some readers will find the detailed accounts of all the retesting and experimenting fascinating, while others will probably prefer just the recipes that resulted and less of the background. Sometimes the emphasis seems a bit odd?for example, there's a chapter on pasta sauces and another on how to make ravioli, but none on making basic pasta dough and using it for different shapes. Kimball is a man of strong opinions ("very few home cooks have a salt box, but everyone needs one"), and his very personal book will not be for everyone. Recommended for larger collections. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. The term bible generally brings to mind an authoritative, comprehensive guide to a discipline. Kimball's Cook's Bible strives less for comprehensiveness than for practicality and accessibility to the competent American home cook. In the tradition of James Beard and other champions of American cuisine, Kimball counsels American cooks to be proud of their heritage and shun pretensions. Nevertheless, he is realistic enough to recognize that the American melting pot is still bubbling away, and dishes that seemed exotic only a few years ago now have the status of standard classics. Because of the many tables included in the book and its "master recipe" approach, this volume may prove helpful in libraries' cooking reference collections. Mark Knoblauch The Cook's Bible takes the mystery out of preparing a great meal. What's the ideal ratio of oil to vinegar in a vinaigrette? Kimball gives you the answer: 4 1/2 to 1. What's the secret to perfect roast chicken? A 375(degree) oven and a 170(degree) internal temperature for the thigh. How about the toughest kitchen challenge of all, piecrust? Kimball makes it easy with the right ingredients (including Crisco and butter) and illustrated step-by-step instructions. For these and the rest of America's best-loved dishes - vegetable soup, poached salmon, roast beef, barbecued ribs, homemade pizza, waffles, chocolate chip cookies, and many others - Kimball has tested and retested to deliver the definitive recipes. In addition to these master recipes, Kimball also serves up a generous helping of appealing variations - nearly 450 recipes in all. Throughout, Kimball elucidates kitchen procedures - butterflying a chicken, for instance, or dicing an onion - with more than 250 beautifully rendered step-by-step illustrations. And he also provides lucid guidance on what kitchen equipment you need and what you can live without - a microwave oven is optional, but good knives are essential - including brand names, model numbers, and prices. From recipes to techniques to equipment, here is a one-volume master class in American home cookery, a cooking school in print for beginners and experienced cooks alike. Chris Kimball founded Cook's Magazine in 1980; it has grown to a paid circulation of 1,000,000. He hosts America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country , which are the top-rated cooking shows on public television, reaching 2 million viewers per week in over 94% of Amer