Why Ann Leary's The Good House Is Worth Your Time
The Good House by Ann Leary came out in 1998 and it did something most cookbooks from that era didn't do very well. It wrote down recipes that actually taste like food you'd eat in a real New England home, not food you'd serve to impress people who are going to talk about your cooking for a week. The book sells used copies for cheap on eBay. That doesn't mean the recipes are bad. It means the book went out of print. Most people who actually cook from it agree it's one of the more honest collections of home cooking ever printed. The recipes work. They're tested in a real kitchen, not a studio with professional sous chefs standing around waiting to fix mistakes before the photo shoot.
Ann Leary The Good House and How to Use It Properly
I've cooked from this book for years. The recipes are straightforward. They don't call for obscure ingredients you can't find at a regular grocery store. That's the whole point. You make things like chicken pie, corn chowder, and apple buckle without driving to three different specialty shops. Here's what I learned the hard way after burning through half a batch of her peach cobbler because I assumed the pan size in the recipe was flexible. It isn't. The book specifies a 9 by 13 inch baking dish for a reason. Using a smaller pan makes the cobbler bake unevenly. The top burns before the filling thickens. I learned this after about twenty minutes of confused staring at my oven window. One thing beginners miss is that Leary writes with implicit technique baked into the instructions. She doesn't always tell you to let meat rest after roasting. She just assumes you know that part. Her recipes also don't pad the word count with stories. Each one gets to the point. That's actually a feature, not a flaw. Some people complain the book lacks headnotes and personal essays. That's true. It also means you spend less time reading and more time cooking.
There are a few recipes in there that need extra attention. Her bread recipes assume you've worked with dough before. If you're brand new to baking, start with the cookies and the simpler dinners. The meatloaf recipe is solid. The stuffed cabbage takes patience. Both work if you follow the steps exactly as written and don't try to speed things up. You can find used copies through Amazon Marketplace, eBay, AbeBooks, and sometimes at local used bookstores. New copies are unnecessary since the text hasn't changed. The first edition is the same as any later printing. I paid about eight dollars for a used copy with a cracked spine that still lies flat. That's a fair price. If you want a more modern equivalent with similar energy, check out Laura Shapiro's Something from the Oven or even Claudia Roden for a broader perspective on home cooking traditions. But for straight New England style recipes that don't apologize for being simple, The Good House is hard to beat.
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