Americans are famous for dishing up large portions of food - so it seems appropriate that their favourite cookbook is a mighty tome.

The Joy of Cooking is more than 1,000 pages long, contains over 4,000 recipes and weighs in at nearly 4lbs.

It is intended to be a food bible - a "one stop shop" for cooks looking for traditional American recipes such as meatloaf and cheesecake, classic French sauces and zesty Mexican salsas.

Some 14 million copies have been sold in the US since it was first published nearly 70 years ago. Now the publishers have produced the first edition for the British market.

Whether the book does as well in Britain as it has in the States is a matter for debate.

To look at, it is plain fare compared to the sumptuous, illustrated cookbooks the British are used to. There are absolutely no photographs and it has the no-nonsense appearance of a school home economics textbook.

The Joy of Cooking has been developed by three generations of one family from Ohio in America's Mid-West.

In 1931 Irma Rombauer, recently widowed when her husband committed suicide, used part of his legacy to publish a collection of nearly 400 recipes she had collected from friends and neighbours.

The book was sold for three dollars with the title A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat.

It was written at a time when domestic help was becoming a thing of the past and women from all walks of life found themselves back in the kitchen. Rombauer's chatty style helped turn cooking from a chore to a pleasure.

Her idea proved a winner which attracted the attention of a major publishing house, Bobbs-Merrill. Unfortunately she accepted a poor publishing deal, which gave her few royalties and was unclear about copyright ownership.

The book was developed over the decades by her daughter Marion Rombauer Becker and then her grandson Ethan Becker.

They were frustrated by the apparent reluctance of the publishers to invest in the book. In 1977 Becker, the surviving member of the cooking dynasty, refused permission for further revisions.

Although his grandmother and mother were both amateur cooks, he had trained as a chef at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.

There was no new book for 22 years and it was only when the publisher was bought out and the new owners agreed to spend money on the book, that Becker relented. A new edition was finally published in the US two years ago with the expertise of 100 chefs and nutritionists.

Every chapter was revised, with the emphasis on freshness, health and convenience. Completely new chapters on pasta, dumplings and noodles, burritos and pizza have been included to reflect modern tastes.

The new edition has been followed up by the British version which has been produced at a cost of £3 million.

Becker, 53, lives in a sprawling house in Cincinnati which was built by his parents.

As far as he is concerned, the ethos of the book is the same as when his grandmother wrote out her favourite recipes.

"It may appear quite different but the basis is the same," he says.

"The idea was that it was a book which would suit all cooks from amateurs to professionals. It is a one-stop-shop - you can pick it up knowing that everything is in there."

He is confident that the book will be a success in Britain - pointing out that American tastes have changed dramatically over the years and become more European.

"In the USA the most common meal is pasta - if someone had told me that 25 years ago I would have laughed. It was just meat and potatoes then.

"Americans used to put ketchup on everything but now they sell more salsa than ketchup."

The Joy of Cooking is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £25 hardback. Available from book shops or by mail order on 01624 675137.

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