Exactly. I'm no cook, I'm barely an amateur cook, and I have absolutely no idea what "caramelized onions" means. Turned into caramel? I'm pretty sure you can get onions brown in 10 minutes, though. It probably won't be caramelized, it might be burned, but it's brown. I remember brown, dry onions. I'm sure caramelized ones are better. In fact, I think my wife once did something with onions that made them very sweet. I guess that was caramelized? But that's not what most recipes need.
To be honest, there's a lot of these sort of words that are often used in recipes where I have no idea what they mean. A basic cook book to just explain these sort of things, would be fantastic. Just the different ways to properly cook onions, mushrooms, and other ingredients, and what those techniques are called. And warn for ways that those names might be misused: "If a recipe says to caramelize onions in 10 minutes, don't caramelize them, do this other thing instead." I think a book like that would be really helpful to a lot of people.
How to Cook Everything, I'm Just Here For the Food, and On Food and Cooking are my big three. The first one for the breadth of recipes, the second to learn a bit more about the physics and chemistry of cooking, and the third for the truly deep dive into everything we know about food.
Then Modernist Cuisine just for the pictures. Actually I learned a bunch when Mhyrvold spoke at my company- we talked about how to make BBQ ribs. His suggestion: sous vide, then immerse in liquid nitrogen, then deep fry.
Ruhlman's 20 was that book for me. From that one book I feel like I can dissect and understand so many core concepts that I very rarely follow recipes any longer, I just skim for the key aspects and wing it, substituting with what I have available, and a reasonable intuition for when I can't do so. Am grateful I made that investment (reading it, making most of the recipes).
To be honest, there's a lot of these sort of words that are often used in recipes where I have no idea what they mean. A basic cook book to just explain these sort of things, would be fantastic. Just the different ways to properly cook onions, mushrooms, and other ingredients, and what those techniques are called. And warn for ways that those names might be misused: "If a recipe says to caramelize onions in 10 minutes, don't caramelize them, do this other thing instead." I think a book like that would be really helpful to a lot of people.