By the book: delectations.

A FEW years ago I came across a book on how to clear the clutter out of one's life. I stopped reading at the point where the author ordered his readers to get rid of all their cookbooks, on the grounds that no one uses cookbooks anyway. If he's that wrong about my kitchen, said I, why should I trust him about any of my other possessions?

My colleague Digby Anderson has a far more sensible reason for urging readers to get rid of (most of) their cookbooks: not that they don't use them, but rather that they do, searching for new (or, worse, easier) dishes instead of perfecting the ones they know. His is a good, conservative approach, rather like that of the Boston matron who was asked where she got her hats. "Get my hats? I have my hats."

But like most things, even conservative things, this can perhaps be carried too far. After all, even Mrs. Oldname presumably got her hats once upon a time. And since we can't undo the modern world, we might at least take advantage of one of its delightful aspects, the chance to explore cuisines far from the one we grew up with, through the profusion of good new cookbooks.

Not that we have to throw away our old ones, Mr. Clutter notwithstanding. Early Fannie Farmer (I use the 1912 edition) is hard to beat on American baked goods. And the first and second waves of writers who worked to introduce Americans to French and Mediterranean cooking -- the Chamberlains with their Clementine, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Michael Field -- hold up very well indeed. But this groundwork having been laid, the trend has been to particularized cookbooks -- particularized by region, or by their provenance in one chef's kitchen. This category has yielded some of my favorites.

When Giuliano Bugialli published Foods of Tuscany, some readers wondered how it would differ from his previous books, since his life's work has seemed to be to persuade the world that anything good in Italian cooking ultimately derives from Tuscany. This can become almost comical, but his recipes are first-rate, and, unlike some people who give cooking classes, he is able to explain techniques clearly on the printed page.

As is Marcella Hazan, from Tuscany's rival province, Emilia-Romagna. Mrs. Hazan is a bit more eclectic -- her Classic Italian Cook Book probably has three times as many recipes from outside Emilia as in it -- and she's deliciously hard-line where it counts:

I cannot imagine Italy without its vegetable stalls, filling ancient squares and animating dusty side streets with mounds of fabulous forms in purple, green, red, gold, and orange. In a land heavy with man's monuments, these are the soil's own masterworks.

Perhaps one day the vitality of these still-flourishing markets will be replaced by the pallor of deep-freeze counters, those cemeteries of food, where produce is sealed up in waxed boxes marked, like some tombstones, with photographs of the departed. But I hope it never happens. I would sooner be deprived of all the marvels of Michelangelo.

Not to be left out is Ada Boni, who in a sense was the Italian Julia Child. However, Italy being as it is, the foreign foods Mrs. Boni acquainted Italians with were -- the foods of other regions of Italy. Her Italian Regional Cooking is a joy; the section on the Abruzzi is particularly rich in wonderful dishes that have not been made familiar by Italian restaurants in this country -- a tuna casserole made with fresh tuna, potatoes, and onions, to mention one, or timballo di Scamorzo (potatoes sliced and parboiled, then dipped in egg and fried, then layered with cheese and baked; superb, and unlike anything else I've ever tasted).

One of my favorite French cookbooks is actually Belgian -- La Cuisine Chantraine, by a Brussels restaurateur, Charles Chantraine. (This book is out of print, but easily available through used-book finders.) Chantraine explains why restaurant cooking can be a good model for the home cook: "You will see in our recipes that the time-consuming work is very often done in advance. . . . It has nothing to do with 'short-cuts' that sacrifice quality. On the contrary, its purpose is to produce a perfect dish, which in a restaurant cannot be done at all unless it is done efficiently." With Chantraine's guidance, anyone who is not put off by instructions like "With the lean pieces of meat removed, the bouillon should continue to simmer for 10 hours" can prepare a year's worth of glace de viande (concentrated meat essence) in a single weekend.

Speaking of restaurateurs, there is Paul Bocuse. I don't know whether, as some say, it is only out of sentiment that Michelin hasn't stripped his restaurant of one of its stars. But whatever may happen to the restaurant, its food -- along with the best of notre Paul's personality -- is enshrined in his books, especially his Cuisine du Marche. This is distinguished not only by the inclusion of his most famous dishes, like the soupe aux truffes Elysee, but also by the loving descriptions of standard preparations that other writers toss off in a few lines. A classic is the page-long mixture of instruction and rapture that begins, "Mayonnaise fears the cold."

One could go on and on. For example, to the Russian empire. The marvelous cooking of the imperial court, leaning heavily on trompe l'oeil (such as the true chicken Kiev, chicken breast made to look like a drumstick, complete with protruding bone), is best represented by Nika Hazelton's Russian Tea Room Cookbook; the rustic cooking of the outlying regions, by Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table.

In fact the only danger -- to paraphrase Pierre Franey, whose 60-Minute Gourmet volumes are a newspaper editor's conceit that actually works -- is that you'll wind up with so many favorite dishes that some of them will get a look-in only once or twice a year. But to anyone not obsessed with clutter, that is surely a much nicer problem than the despairing cry, "I can't think of a single thing to cook tonight."