&lt;b&gt;'Cook's Illustrated: The Science of Good Cooking'&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;
You follow recipes to the letter, have &quot;Joy of Cooking,&quot; but are stumped by the occasional culinary failure. Consider this book. In addition to 400 recipes &quot;engineered for perfection,&quot; its focus is on culinary &quot;whys.&quot; Instead of appetizer-to-dessert chapters, you have &quot;Concepts,&quot; as in &quot;Slow Heating Makes Meat Tender.&quot; Sidebars (&quot;Practical Science: Chicken Safety,&quot; &quot;Why This Recipe Works&quot;) plus explanatory visuals pepper the volume, making it more accessible than some other science-focused books.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;b&gt;America's Test Kitchen, $40&lt;/b&gt;