Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home: A Cookbook. (Julia Child & Jacques Pepin with David Nussbaum)

Child & Pepin demonstrate techniques (on which they don’t always agree), discuss ingredients, improvise, balance flavors to round out a meal, and conjure up new dishes from leftovers. Center stage are carefully spelled-out recipes flanked by Julia’s and Jacques’s comments—the accumulated wisdom of two lifetimes of honing their cooking skills. Fine.