The Vietnamese Cookbook
Food & Drink Cookbook Healthy Cooking Practical Skills Culinary Reference Vietnamese Cuisine Vintage Cookbook Asian Cooking
The Vietnamese Cookbook by Meera Freeman and Le Van Nhan is the 1995 Penguin paperback that introduced a generation of English-speaking cooks to the bright, herb-driven flavors of Vietnam. At just 160 pages it is compact enough to keep on the kitchen counter, yet it covers the full spectrum of the cuisine—from foundational nuoc cham and pho broths to street-food classics such as banh xeo and goi cuon—each recipe tested for Western kitchens but faithful to authentic technique. Buyers searching for a vintage cookbook that still delivers reliable, restaurant-quality results consistently rank this edition above later reprints because the 1995 layout places the ingredient list and step-by-step instructions on the same page, eliminating the need to flip back and forth while prepping.
What makes this copy especially appealing is its clean, unmarked interior: no previous-owner scribbles, no dog-eared corners, no ex-libris stamps—just crisp pages that invite you to add your own margin notes as you master the techniques. The binding remains tight and strong, a testament to Penguin’s durable trade paperback construction, and even the gentle spine fade and inner-paper age-yellowing are subtle reminders that this is a true vintage find, not a recent POD facsimile. For collectors, the 1995 first-edition imprint is becoming increasingly scarce in any condition; for everyday cooks, it is a practical, ready-to-use manual that still costs far less than a single restaurant bowl of pho.
Whether you are a young adult building your first cookbook shelf or an experienced home cook hunting for an authentic Vietnamese reference, this copy offers both culinary and collectible value. Search terms like “vintage Vietnamese cookbook,” “1995 Meera Freeman paperback,” or “authentic pho recipe book” will lead you here, but only one copy is available—grab it before it disappears into a private kitchen library.
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