With households watching every penny, a growing number of Americans are ditching their takeout menus and heading into the kitchen to cook dinner at home. The trouble is, many don't know how.
"We have forgotten how to cook," says author Mollie Katzen, best known for "The Moosewood Cookbook." As families learned to rely on dialing for pizza, they stopped being able to bake their own.
Now, lots of people want to save money but can't even make eggs, she says. We've become a nation of inexperienced but newly determined cooks, and that has given cookbook authors and publishers a promising new niche.
After years of cookbooks that ranged from pretentious celebrity chef volumes to glossy tributes to cupcakes, the latest trend embraces Cooking 101 - books that take readers back to the basics.
This fall, British chef Jamie Oliver released "Jamie's Food Revolution," which teaches basic techniques that save money and produce healthier eating habits.
And Katzen will roll out "Get Cooking," the first in a series of books that targets beginning cooks with straightforward recipes for soups, pasta, chicken and burgers.
These new offerings follow last fall's "Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics" by TV chef Ina Garten, and "Martha Stewart's Cooking School" by Martha Stewart. Garten's book was the top seller and Stewart's was in the top five, says Kathryn Popoff, vice president of trade books for bookseller Borders Group.
Books such as New York Times' columnist Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and "Cooking Know-How," by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough also populate the growing genre.
Basic cookbooks have long been a staple of the cookbook industry. Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" walked Americans through Gallic cuisine. Fannie Farmer taught home cooks how to measure properly. "The Joy of Cooking" introduced asparagus and how to handle it. What has changed is the level of knowledge - or, perhaps, ignorance - these new books assume.
Katzen is amazed at the level of skills. "The questions I get are so basic 'Should I buy the frozen spinach or the fresh,' 'I'd like to make an omelet, how do I do that?' I thought it was obvious, but it's not."
Culinary historians say America's migration from the stove began sometime after World War II, when more women moved into the workforce, and the makers of packaged foods began casting cooking as drudgery to be dispensed with quickly.
Our skills eroded through the 1960s, '70s, and '80s as families worked more and ate fewer meals together.
Now the average home cook's knowledge has declined so thoroughly that The Betty Crocker Kitchens Stylebook, which is used for recipes and package directions, has simplified some of its terms. For instance, modern cooks are instructed to "beat" sugar and butter together rather than "cream" it (the instruction of yesteryear), cookbooks manager Lois Tlusty said in an e-mail message.
At the same time, people began to eat out more -- not just hamburgers, but high-end fare at restaurants presided over by culinary luminaries.
Chefs became celebrities and food-driven media, such as specialized magazines and the Food Network, helped make contemporary diners more sophisticated than ever, at least on the surface.
"People want to throw around terms like 'jus' or 'coulis,"' says Anne Mendelson, a culinary historian and contributing editor at Gourmet magazine.
"Some people say we're getting more sophisticated. But then you look at the cookbooks meant to teach people to cook, and you hear horror stories of the trouble ordinary people have using those books."
