BUY IT: The Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition, $24 on Amazon

The Ultimate Gourmet Classic

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

By Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. Knopf.

It is hard to overstate the impact Mastering the Art of French Cooking had on home cooking when it first came out in 1961. In addition to introducing the world to late national treasure Julia Child, it also opened American eyes to authentic French cuisine and sparked a national interest in gourmet cooking. Before this book came out, French food was something that only happened in fancy (read: expensive) restaurants and, well, in France. After this book came out, everyone was suddenly rushing to put boeuf Bourguignon on the table at their next dinner party.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is infamously full of complicated recipes; the entire plot of the 2009 film Julie and Julia hinges on this fact. But if you've been too intimidated to try out Child's masterwork, do know that not every recipe requires killing live lobsters or preparing complicated terrines. Since it's spring, check out the section on simple asparagus preparations or make a Filet de Poisson Poché au Vin Blanc—a super-simple poached fish in white wine. Maybe even make them together.

And for what it's worth, this is the only book on this list that did not spark a debate among our editorial staff. Mastering the Art of French Cooking was a shoo-in from the beginning.

BUY IT: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, $29 on Amazon

The Sweet Tooth Satisfier

Baking: From My Home to Yours

By Dorie Greenspan. Houghton Mifflin.

Speaking of Julia Child, for our baking pick we turned to her former collaborator Dorie Greenspan. It is nearly impossible to not be drawn to Dorie—her writing is so charming, her fans refer to her on a first-name basis. But do not be fooled by the friendly headnotes: these recipes are serious business. More than any other baking author we can think of, Dorie Greenspan's recipes work. You can lean on them hard when you need a cake or a batch of cookies to turn out well.

We picked Baking out of all of Greenspan's books largely because it's comprehensive. If we were only going to put one baking book in the canon, it couldn't just cover desserts. Baking tops out at a whopping 300 recipes, starting at the breakfast table. And while we love her collaborations with chefs like Julia Child, Pierre Herme, and Daniel Boulud, she's at her best when she's writing for herself. Yes, picking this book leaves a bit of a blind spot on our list when it comes to bread baking—Greenspan does cover brioche, quick breads, and biscuits—but in every other capacity this is the ideal baking book.

BUY IT: Baking: From My Home to Yours, $25 on Amazon

The Ode to Southern Food

The Taste of Country Cooking

By Edna Lewis. Knopf.

Before Southern food was trendy, before seemingly every restaurant across the country put pimento cheese on their menu and country ham became as prized as Prosciutto di Parma, there was Edna Lewis. Her work preserves Southern food culture, African-American food culture, and a way of American life that has all but disappeared. But as much as The Taste of Country Cooking can be seen as an artifact of a vanishing cuisine, Lewis was also remarkably ahead of her time.

Lewis grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a tiny farming community established by freed slaves that revolved around the ebbs and flows of the growing seasons. Accordingly, her classic book The Taste of Country Cooking is organized into menus by season, which was practically unheard of when it came out in 1976. For reference, Alice Water's pioneering temple to seasonal cooking, Chez Panisse, had just opened a few years earlier, in 1971.