Best cookbook you can't have

Here is one for the foodies (that would be Joanna and NBK) The NYT asked a number of food related types what their favorite out of print cook book is. Some are straitforward, some are bizarre, like this one.

Modern cookbook writers rarely take the time to address the origins of women's panties, the best time of year for eating robins and meadowlarks, the effects of menstruation on mayonnaise-making and the unheralded kitchen pioneering of Genghis Khan, the Virgin Mary and Stonewall Jackson. George Herter's bombastic comic-culinary masterpiece, "Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices," self-published in 1960, did all that and more.

My favorite isn't really out of print but it is old-skool, the Betty Crocker Cooky book. See, it's Cooky not cookie so you it is from way back in the way back. There are some choice photos and I like the top cookies of each decade. For example, brownies were the BOMB in the 1920s. The first half of the 1950s was all about the salted peanut crisp. The top cookie of never? That has to be the Christmas Jewel. I made that for a party once and only one person took one, and they put it back after taking a bite. That's just cold.