Rush Limbo posted:

I'd honestly say Escoffier's cookbook is pretty worthwhile to have. It is slightly antiquated by now (when we learning from it, we joked how he would pass anything through a strainer to mince it and we were desperately searching for an instance of him using a whole chicken) and very much designed for those who already know how to cook as it is very terse and only gives you the basic outline, on the assumption you know enough to know how everything works. It also lists huge amounts of ingredients because it's assumed to be used for batch cooking.

It was made back in the day when food processors didn't exist and you had underlings to prep everything for you, but with the advances in prep tech a lot of the stuff is actually far easier to do now.

If you can get past the language and slight idiosyncrasies you probably have one of the best cookbooks ever made with literally hundreds of recipes, all fantastic.