As each year ticks by with a bevy of new cookbook releases, it amazes me that so many of them continue to be fresh, exciting, even groundbreaking. I excitedly bookmark recipes that I can't wait to try, to add to an ever-growing list. However, this doesn't mean that the older cookbooks on my bookshelves are relegated to being dust collectors. There are tomes I return to time and again because the recipes speak to me. I'm not alone in this, The Guardian's Rachel Cooke explains why she often returns to Jane Grigson's English Food, a book that turns 50 years old in November.

Even though the book is a half-century old, Cooke believes that many of its recipes seem fresh and innovative. Perhaps it's because the dishes have gone out of fashion only to be "rediscovered" years later, or maybe it's because the recipes are timeless (or a little of both). "English Food is bulging with things that, now half or even entirely forgotten, suddenly seem wonderfully new without being at all faddish or insubstantial," writes Cooke.

I think that there are a lot of older cookbooks ripe for being "discovered" by a younger audience that might be curious about the foods eaten by their parents or who are just into a "retro" vibe. It happens with fashion all the time: I see my neighbor's kids wearing clothes that are eerily similar to what I wore at the same age. It's amusing and dispiriting in equal measures. Why wouldn't it happen to foods and, in turn, cookbooks? I see glimmers of this with books like Baking Yesteryear, the HBO series Julia, and a raft of TikTok videos that discuss forgotten or vintage foods.

Books that I regularly return are not quite as old as English Food, but they are older than several of my coworkers. They include Jacques Pépin's La Technique, Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible, and Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, among others. Which older books do you find yourself using over and over again?