Introduction I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I think this is the book I was always meant to write. As it's my third cookbook, this is a bit awkward. It would be like declaring a new child the one you got right, while your first two glare at you from across the room. To be clear, the first two weren't practice rounds. I'm very proud of them, and I'm overjoyed that so many of you have welcomed them into your kitchens. (I hope you know I'm back to talking about the cookbooks, not my kids, but if my children do wander into your kitchen, please send them home soon.). As I thought about what I wanted to do next, I rewound to the year 2006 and I remembered the central energy that drove me to create Smitten Kitchen in the first place. It was never to flex my cooking skills, which were just burgeoning at the time. It was never just to show you things you'd never seen before; I always bristled at innovation for the sake of newness when, as far as I'd tasted, the perfect pound cake didn't yet exist. It was to create a place where I could collect all of the recipes worth repeating. I wanted my own Forever Files. I was relatively new to cooking but I kept running into duds. Even 16 years ago, there were already too many recipes on the internet, and it made it hard to choose. When I tweaked a yellow cake so that it was perfectly crumbed, or found a method that ensured my chicken would never come out dry, I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. I settled for a url. It's unclear why I couldn't just be a person who was satisfied with a great lemon cake recipe for my own repertoire and enjoyment. No, I also needed to make sure that nobody else ever made another one, as the thought of a friend making a mediocre lemon cake bothers me more than anything should. It's definitely something wired deeply into my personality. My father, who passed away in 2018, also couldn't keep an opinion to himself. He wrote many op-eds and letters-to-the-editor; he was one of those . His strongest wish near the end was that I write a third cookbook. "Why, Dad? I wrote two. Can't I quit while I'm relatively ahead?" I asked more than once, but he loved the words "three-book deal" (even when I told him each book was individually pitched and negotiated, due to my fear of commitment). But something shifted around me when he passed; and when my son, who is now 13 and reminds me so much of him (truly just brimming with strongly worded letters) wanted to know which of my recipes he could pull off. I realized how much I wanted to be able to hand my kids a collection of recipes specifically written with making them forever in mind. I don't mean basics, shudder ; not a cell in my body is motivated to teach you how to make compound butter. I don't mean "the last 100 recipes you'll ever need" or something a clever marketer would cook up; imagine feeling that confidently clairvoyant about all of your future cooking needs! (I could never.) No, Keepers recipes accumulate everything I've learned that makes shopping easier, cooking more doable and enjoyable, and food more reliably delicious. It's what happens when you've read every one of the 350,000 comments that have appeared with your recipes since 2006 and absorbed them into your brainwaves; I'm never not thinking about how a stranger will feel making a recipe of mine on spec in their kitchen, with free time they're not sure they have, just because it promised greatness. Here's what I consider a Keeper recipe, too. It's a brilliantly fuss-free lemon poppy seed cake. It's my favorite way to roast winter squash. It's an epic quiche. It's a slow-roasted chicken on a bed of unapologetically schmalty croutons. It's the last apple crisp I personally will ever make, and I hope it has the same effect on you. And, as you might have seen coming, I now think that the perfect pound cake exists. I nominate each of these recipes for your forever files. Within each recipe, I hope you know I have tested and tested them, and, in every place I could, I have removed every single hurdle possible -- sifting, extra bowls, extra rising times, separating eggs, measuring zest, lopping off stray tablespoons of flours because I love even measurements -- without compromising the result. When I brought a dish to the table, everyone eating it was grilled on texture, seasoning, and execution. (Dinnertime is a real hoot around here.) And that is because a Keeper is a recipe I hope you'll keep around for good. I want you to make them, hopefully love them, and quietly envision a future in which this dish will play a recurring role, because it doesn't just fit into your repertoire -- it belongs there. I realize it now sounds like I'm talking about a life partner, and not, say, the zucchini and pesto lasagna I hope you'll make every summer. It might be because in my mind, I find it impossible to say the word "keeper" without hearing the residents at the nursing home where I used to work (that story for another time) sing-songing in their Yiddish accents about boyfriends they approved of. "He's a keeper !" But these recipes don't care about your partner status. They are here, first and foremost, to bring joy to you , the cook. Now, please understand that hoping every single recipe in this book will be worthy of lamination is, uh, a tall order, the cause of a dozen gray hairs and unequivocally the reason I took five years (and a few begged-for weeks) to finish this book. I cannot promise that. I can tell you this was the goal, it was the guiding voice nudging me along as I embraced, rejected, and waded through 500+ jotted ideas to whittle them down to this 100. If this pays off, and if you find a few Keepers here for your forever files, I will soar over the tall buildings around me with glee. So much for not being melodramatic, eh? Excerpted from Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files: a Cookbook by Deb Perelman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.