My husband and I have a cookbook problem. Our 15 linear feet of cookbook shelving has been maxed out and new cookbooks have taken over the undershelf of the coffee table and started taking over the bar between the kitchen and the not-kitchen space in our small New York apartment.

Part of this problem is historical: we’ve gone through phases of cooking (The Joy of Cheesecake, Scoop, The Ultimate Ice Cream Cookbook, The Cake Bible); we’ve picked up cookbooks as souvenirs (The Herb Farm Cookbook, Wisconsin Herb Cookbook, The Greens Cookbook).

Part of the problem is aspirational: ; we’ve purchased books on Filipino cooking (Amboy, The Foods of the Philippines); books on cooking theory (I’m Just Here for the Food, Pairing Wine and Food), and way too many vegetarian cookbooks (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Moosewood [fill in title here], Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone).

Part of the problem is practical: if you need a recipe today, what do you do? You Google it. So why do we keep buying more cookbooks?

I was talking to someone the other night who said her nephew had given her a Jewish cookbook. But so many of the recipes don’t fit their current diet, that they can really only use one or two. I know someone who regularly uses her cookbooks, working her way through them methodically the way that Julia Child chef did a few years ago. But I suspect most of us buy cookbooks, flip through them thinking, wow, this sounds good, maybe make one or two recipes, then put it on the shelf to collect dust. Every now and then, you find one that falls apart in your hands.

Bugialli on Pasta is that one for us. Well, to be honest, I think we’ve made two recipes out of it. But one of them we make every year religiously: his pesto. I keep trying to talk my husband into making the silk handkerchief pasta that goes with it – delicately thin pasta sheets handmade from pasta flour and white wine, and gently blanched in saltwater.

I get the pesto but not the pasta.

The cookbook is falling to pieces but that’s only because he was making pesto when the flood hit, cascading down through eight floors and down through the kitchen ceiling. I tried to buy him a replacement copy last year but it doesn’t seem to be in print anymore.

If I were to winnow out the collection (something not happening any time soon). I’d toss a lot of the aspirational stuff, take photos of my favorite recipes from the ones with one or two keepers, and get it down to one shelf: the Joy of Cooking, The Greens Cookbook, Weekends at Moosewood, Joy of Cheesecake, and Bugialli.

The Joy of Cooking may seem old-fashioned but I’ll tell you this: the recipes are bulletproof. At Thanksgiving, my sister wanted a lasagna – a tomato lasagna and we weren’t about to make that NYT lasagna that was going around during lockdown. So I Googled around and came up with a recipe and it was horrible. If you need a solid recipe, just grab Joy of Cooking.

And if you need the perfect pesto recipe, keep an eye out for Bugialli at used book sales.