That, in turn, means that "Joy" has no hierarchy of foods, no sense that there are cooking traditions or styles that are innately superior to others. Marinated and grilled octopus appears alongside meatloaf; potato salad with celery and mayonnaise is actually on the same page as jicama salad with lime and cilantro. The only laurel (or bay leaf) "Joy" awards is the designation "Cockaigne" -- particular favorite recipes of the Becker family (Almond Torte Cockaigne, Chicken Soup Cockaigne and the like). Unlike virtually every other cookbook, there's no agenda to "Joy" beyond "we're going to get hungry soon -- let's do something about it!"

The same real-world attitude leads the book to acknowledge that shortcuts are often just fine, and sometimes necessary. Tomato Jalapeño Chilaquiles, for instance, involves "eight ounces thick homemade-style tortilla chips." Note that "-style": Most people cooking the dish are going to buy a bag of chips and save themselves the hassle of frying cut-up tortillas, just as they're not going to try to circumvent the request for "a 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes" by canning the tomatoes themselves. Should they feel like going the extra mile for the chips, though, there's a recipe for them that calls for "top-quality storebought or homemade corn tortillas." And the stalwarts who want to start by making their own tortillas get a recipe for them; for shaping them, it suggests "two pieces of heavy plastic such as a plastic freezer bag cut open and then cut in half." No nonsense, nothing fancy: beautiful.

What elevates "Joy" from a broad-minded gesture to a masterpiece, though, is the brilliance of its technical writing and design, which like the best technical work barely looks at all technical. Cooks need to refer to recipes twice: once before they shop for or measure out the ingredients they'll need, and again when the cooking process is actually underway. That's why a list of ingredients traditionally appears before the directions proper; it means that all the ingredients are effectively listed twice, and take up a lot of valuable space on the page.

Rombauer's masterstroke was the invention of the "action method" of cookbook writing, with ingredients popping up in boldface midrecipe rather than being listed at the beginning. You can glance at the instructions and see what you're going to need. When you get down to cooking, the ingredients pop out as they're called for. And, as "Joy" expanded with American taste over the years, assimilating sesame noodles and pad thai and risotto, the compact double-column format of its design allowed the authors to cram more and more recipes into its limited page-count.

Seen as a paradigm of book design as much as a set of instructions specifically for making food, "Joy of Cooking" looks like the origin of the modern how-to book. Its breezy tone, sidebars, explanatory illustrations, intricate work with typefaces and general attitude that anyone can do this stuff originated the concepts that drive the "Dummies" and "Complete Idiot's Guide" books, but without their jokey self-deprecation. Once again, "Joy" emphasizes the pleasure in the process as much as the result, and it's as much a pleasure to browse through as it is to use. It's fun. There's a flair to its language: "Skimping on butter robs pancakes of moistness."

Irma Rombauer died in 1964, Marion Rombauer Becker in 1976. Becker's son Ethan Becker oversees "Joy" these days. The splendid current edition, published in 1997, was more or less written by committee, and it's a good thing, too -- no single cook could get it all right. (Mendelson notes that for the book's first 20 years, Rombauer suggested cooking a cup of rice in two quarts of water.) It also, blessedly, omits the confetti of little symbols that cluttered up the previous edition. Still, "Joy of Cooking" retains that all-important voice that Rombauer and Becker pioneered: the friend who casually walks you through making something good for dinner from whatever happens to be on hand. Rombauer may have been a terrible cook, but she taught generations of Americans to cook well, and to love it.

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