by jon.larmee » Mon Dec 16, 2019 8:34 pm
I know I'm late to the post, but I wanted to throw in a suggestion. Typical cookbooks are great and certainly come with a degree of quality guarantee and certainly there are monolithic standards like The Joy of Cooking, but they leave out a sense of anarchy and personal creativity that teens love to seek out in everything.
To that end, I'd suggest The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit as well as Culinary Artistry by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. The former lists popular foods under 16 categories and gives a brief synopsis of pairings. The latter (which also has a sequel titled The Flavor Bible) alphabetically lists item after item after item with suggested pairings that are ranked by how commonly they're used and includes a ton of blurbs from acclaimed chefs about how they've used certain combinations.
These books may make better gifts for a cook who's mastered some basics give the lack of guidelines (so maybe a great birthday present), but their value is irrefutable. I can attest that at least two local chefs keep copies in their kitchen for when they're standing over a pot thinking, "it's missing something, I just don't know what."