We are what we eat.

Serving up the best in food writing.

The Best American Recipes 1999 is better
on the page than on the plate.

You know that feeling, when you get a new cookbook and start flipping the pages, of thinking, “Oooh, I want to make this!” and “I can’t wait to try that!”? No cookbook in years has given me that feeling so often as the aptly named The Best American Recipes 1999 (edited by Fran McCullough and Suzanne Hamlin, Houghton Mifflin, $26). I could hardly finish flipping the pages, I was so eager to get into the kitchen. 

This collection is the first in a new series from the publishers of such successful annual anthologies as The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Essays. Every year I look forward to the Essays collection and the companion The Best American Sports Writing. I’d never dreamed of a comparable culling of the best recipes—from books, magazines, newspapers and even the Internet—but it’s an inspired idea. And The Best American Recipes 1999 is even more handsome a volume than its non-foodie cousins: a hardback, rather than a squishy softcover, with 110 clearly presented recipes plus (not enough) full-color photos. 

The book garnered press attention for its introduction touting the top 10 food trends of the year (“Comeback of the Year: Cheese,” “Cooking Technique of the Year: Brining”). But it’s the recipes themselves that draw you to the book and make it the source of your grocery shopping lists for several weeks. 

Unfortunately, the recipes seldom live up to their mouth-watering promises. You keep trying them—because, darn it, how can Sourdough-Pumpkin Strata be anything but fabulous?—but they keep disappointing. Sourdough-Pumpkin Strata turns out to be lumpy, like the aftermath of a bread truck overturning in a pumpkin patch. (I ended up dumping the leftovers in the Cuisinart; with the offputting texture blended into submission, the flavor wasn’t bad. Same for another pumpkin dish, Pumpkin and Goat Cheese Gratin, where the one-inch squash cubes never quite got amalgamated into the gratin.) 

Perhaps the very collected nature of the book is at fault. With no controlling intelligence behind the creation of the recipes, The Best American Recipes 1999 becomes, well, potluck. So the Salmon in Sweet Red Curry comes out too hot even for palates inclined toward the spicy, the coconut milk overwhelms Jamaican Rice and Peas, and Café Tamayo Chocolate Ice Cream tastes like frozen fudge.

Not that there aren’t some winners here: Wheezer’s Cheese Pie is a triumph of “white trash cooking” (though we’ve done much the same with recipes off the back of the Bisquick box), and I’ll make Peanut Corn Chowder the next time we have company. Other recipes are serviceable—Jerk Chicken, for example, though it’s no better than other, simpler recipes I’ve tried, and Cider-Cured Pork Chops, which showcases the top-10 trend of brining—but hardly worthy of the “Best” appellation. 

And not that I wouldn’t buy The Best American Recipes 1999 again. I’ll even keep trying the recipes, to find the handful that deliver on the deliciousness on the page. It’s just that this cookbook raises your expectations so high, the reality on your plate comes as a disappointment.

* Peanut Corn Chowder recipe from The Best American Recipes 1999