One Thousand and One . . . Recipes?

Who needs one thousand of anything? Okay, there are those Arabian nights and Scheherazade's tales, but does anyone need 1001 cookie recipes? Or muffins? Or cupcakes? But the titles abound. Even when the numbers aren't quite so high, it's still fairly absurd: 365 Vegetarian Soups, 501 Muffins, 660 Curries, 100 Ice Cream Desserts, 50 Ways to Cook Most Everything. Or even, while not numbered, How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

It's like gluttony in a whole new way. It's not even really about baking much less eating 1001 cookies or muffins, but owning, collecting, possessing the ability to do so. To have the option. The choice. We Americans love both collecting and choices, as well as cooking, and together, these have combined to create a mania for these comprehensive recipe collections (though, in fairness, the last two, by Mark Bittman, really aren't in the same category as many of the others. But the title connects them to the same trend.).

And I'm as guilty as the next cookbook buyer, owning several of the ones I've mentioned. Note I said "owning," not using, because I buy the books but don't often use them. I just thumb through them for ideas or just entertainment. It's like enjoying the cookie without eating it. Which, I suppose is less gluttonous than actually eating the cookie, but it all stems from the same place, some kind of internal need for satisfaction, satiation, that has not been met. In fact, recently, I came across two cookbooks, one on muffins, one on cookies, which together would have given me more than 1000 recipes, and I was obsessed: in addition to those recipes, there were charts and lists in the back for combining ingredients to make toppings and fillings and frostings and glazes, which would then produce even more variations on the recipes included. I was fascinated, no I was gluttonous. Here were 1000 recipes I didn't have. I wanted them, I needed them.

Until I looked closer. Not only were the recipes somewhat suspect--raw eggs in uncooked frosting, anyone?--but the pictures, when you actually studied them, showed products created by inexperienced cooks--overbrowned cookies, quick breads with huge domed and cracked centers. I had been lulled into liking the books by the sheer quantity of recipes alone, not the quality, which is exactly the problem with these kinds of books.

With our love of collecting and choice, sometimes I think we've forgotten to be picky, to be discerning, to be educated, or just to know when to stop, when enough is enough. More just isn't better. And I'm as guilty as the rest, having many more than 1001 recipes for cookies and muffins and cupcakes and soups and ice cream and vegetables and everything. But I'm increasingly conscious of the ridiculousness of it. And so I left those two cookbooks, the ones on muffins and cookies, at the bookstore, not beguiled by 1001 new things, even with a handy do-it-yourself list in the back. (I'm not giving up cookbooks in general, especially the historical, unique, or essay-based ones. Those offer food for the soul and the mind, and not just food to fill the stomach.)

Though, I did write down a few frostings. Without raw eggs. It's a small step in the right direction.