Mastering the Art of French Cooking is an excellent historical reference cookbook.
Genetic manipulation of heritage ingredients probably started in the 1950's due to the mass post WW2 migration population explosion and the need to transport food long distances without spoiling.
Many of the ingredients listed in the book are heritage ingredients, where the majority of today's ingredients are hybrid breeds suitable for refrigeration. Unfortunately in the genetic breeding process, many hybrid breeds lack taste and require adding condiments, otherwise the end result will vary from excellent to very bland. Also unfortunate, the majority of heritage ingredients cannot be refrigerated and need cooking on the day the produce was picked.
Wheat is a generic name given to a collection of grass seeds. Depending on the availability of regional ingredients, baking recipes will produce a result from excellent to catastrophic failure.
Baking is chemistry. The best book I found for explaining baking is - Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman.
http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728
The global recipe database contains six million recipes.
Over the past ten years, I downloaded and collated 150,000 recipes, from various recipe manager collections.
I started with Living Cookbook 2011. When it starting crashing in Windows 7, I moved onto MasterCook 14, then 15.
I have the complete Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One recipes with photos in MasterCook format.
The majority of baking recipes in my database are variations on a theme. The above book eliminates many of the baking recipes in circulation, because all a person needs to understand is the ratios required for making perfect bread / pastry.
The same with meals. Many of the meals in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, over time, have been extensively tested, tweaked and simplified. Which recipe is the best is dependent on the individual taste preference. Disregard the critics, go for personal preference.