Cookbook for gaining confidence cooking meat, esp roasts?

[TheLightGetsIn]

I am fairly rubbish with roasts. I end up frantically googling recipes and going round and round the internet every time, and usually still getting it wrong. Can anyone recommend a "classic" cookbook that is good for giving you confidence with roasting meat? By classic I guess I mean an old fashioned one that teaches you the basics about cooking temperatures and times per weight - e.g. "chicken is a lean meat that needs added fat like butter rubbed over it before roasting, but duck has enough fat on it so doesn't need extra". "Lamb needs to be roasted for 20 minutes at 200 degrees C, then at 160 degrees for 20 minutes per 450g, then left for 10 minutes with foil over it before carving" or similar.

The trouble I find with most recipes on the internet is that they ask you to cook the roast according to a list of very specific ingredients, or tell you to start with a joint of pork weighing exactly 2kg or whatever, which means that I have no idea how to adjust cooking time when my joint weighs only 1.2kg.

Delia has never aimed her recipes at housewives ! Her books are aimed at home cooks who want to know how to cook decent food. How to Cook was just her original Complete Cookery Course updated in format in the early 90s. She's been responsible for the popularity of so many things we now take for granted, e.g. pesto.

I have Delia's original complete cookery course, it's one book. It's looking pretty battered now, especially the page with roasting times. And the jam section. I've bought many recipe books since, I use the internet and I'll experiment with my own, but I fall back on this book more times than I can remember. You know that the recipes will work.

My go to cook book is a Mary Berry Complete Cook Book from 1995. It was published by Dorling Kindersley. I use it for all the classic meals especially roasts.