Books like On food and cooking by Harold McGee

Mark Bittman's entry‑level cookbook offers clear, practical recipes for everyday cooking, covering basic techniques and a wide range of dishes—including vegetarian options—aimed at home cooks in the United States.

The Art of Fermentation is a definitive guide that translates the science, history, and practical techniques of fermentation into clear, step‑by‑step instructions for beginners and experts alike.

A comprehensive French culinary encyclopedia and cookbook, the Larousse Gastronomique offers detailed entries on ingredients, techniques, and classic dishes, enriched with illustrative photographs, making it an essential reference for chefs and food lovers alike.

The Flavor Bible is a definitive culinary reference that teaches chefs and home cooks how to season ingredients for maximum flavor, drawing on the expertise of leading chefs and offering thousands of ingredient pairings.

The Mere Mortal's Guide to Fine Dining delivers practical etiquette, menu‑reading tips and foundational knowledge for navigating restaurants with confidence and sense of humor.

A comprehensive reference guide from the Mayo Clinic that links nutritional science to everyday food choices, detailing how specific foods affect health and disease.

Celebrating home-cooked meals through chatty, sometimes cheeky recipes and 350 mouthwatering recipes, from a truly sublime Tarragon French Roast Chicken to a totally decadent Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake.

Union Square Cafe's 160 recipes, inspired by the restaurant's signature dishes and tips for success, bring the bustling energy and warm artwork of the Union Square Cafe to your kitchen. Perfect for home cooks and culinary enthusiasts alike.

Traversing decades and continents, Comfort Food for Breakups is an elegiac, sensual, and beguiling memoir about food, family, and personal history by fiction writer and filmmaker Marusya Bociurkiw. In these intimate vignettes, food—soup, eggs, chocolate truffle cake, perogies—nourishes, comforts, and heals the wounds of the past. Knishes recall a father haunted by memories of time spent in a concentration camp during World War II; chocolate evokes memories of queer girls and liasons in dim lesbian bars. For the author, both at home across Canada and in her travels through North America and Europe, food becomes her salvation, and a way to engage with the world. Thoughtful, moving, and passionate, Comfort Food for Breakups muses upon the ways in which food intersects with a nexus of hungers: for intimacy, for sex, for home.