Cookbook Review: The Auburn Cookbook

Years ago, my father's grandmother gave my mother a paperback cookbook, bound with a white plastic comb binding. It had a blue cover with a clocktower and an eagle in flight. Inside is a note scrawled in ballpoint pen: “This is an updated edition of the cookbook I was issued in home ec in high school. It has served Grandfather and I for many years and many meals. I hope you enjoy it!”

When I came to Auburn University, I recognized that clocktower. It was the same as was on the front of my mom's cookbook – the iconic Samford Hall. And today, in the university bookstore, I found what is now my newest cookbook!

The Auburn Cookbook is published by the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. You can find it online for about $15, but it was at the bookstore for a steal price of $12.50. I had a 50% coupon, so I grabbed a second one as a gift – or a backup. With tax, it came up to $10 per cookbook – not bad for a cookbook of this size and usefulness!

I have to recommend this cookbook for any new cooks, or anyone who feels uneasy in the kitchen. Along with nearly four hundred pages of recipes, it includes sections in the front about planning a nutritious meal, pairing spices with food, common substitutes, food safety, and more things that a beginner might find useful. In the back, there's a somewhat antiquated manual showing the correct way of setting up a table, be it for morning coffee or a full-out formal dinner. It goes far beyond forks to the left, knives to the right – it shows where all of the serving dishes, down to the last slotted spoon, should go. I guess it would be good should you ever host the members of the Emily Post Society or something.

Anyway, on to the food. If you're an American, most of the recipes will look familiar, with very little departing from what's typically made in American kitchens. The main strength in this cookbook is just how many sections there are – twenty-one sections of food alone, including a section for candies & nuts, one for appetizers, and one for relishes and salad dressings. Each section is prefaced with useful information about the food in that section, like how to select fresh fish and how long you can keep meat in the fridge. It's not terribly exciting, but it gives you a great basis for surviving in the kitchen. This newest edition includes nutrition info on most of the recipes with calories, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, protein, fat, and calories from fat, which is really useful.

The only bad thing about this cookbook is that it's geared for family meals serving four to eight people, not singles or couples (usually I'm just cooking for my boyfriend and I). Still, recipes are easily halved or, as my friends prefer, guests may be invited to dinner.

In any case, I'm really excited to finally have a copy of my great grandmother's textbook for myself! I can't wait to try out all of the recipes I haven't tried yet at home.

Consider giving this cookbook a go – if not for yourself, then for some young couple that's about to get married and move out on their own, a high school senior about to have an apartment to himself, or anyone in need of solid cooking advice.