We’re as guilty as the next kitchen maven. When we set out to make a new dish, we turn to Mama Google. Unless it’s a traditional Italian dish. Then we ask Michele Scicolone. Or one of her 16 cookbooks — most likely 1,000 Italian Recipes. Our copy is sauce-stained from steady use, but we still browse through it. And imagine the flavors.

We have our favorites for other cuisines as well — Charles Virion’s French Country Cookbook, Penelope Casas’ Foods & Wines of Spain, and so on. Our vinyl records long ago gave way to tapes which gave way to CDs which gave way to an mp4 player. The shelves we cleared of music are covered with cookbooks. They still sing a sweet siren song.

That’s why we made the pilgrimage to Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks (2 East 2nd Street, New York; 212-989-8962; bonnieslotnickcookbooks.com). She first opened in 1997 in the West Village and relocated fairly recently to this “garden level” space in the East Village. Even before she opened her own shop, she sought out-of-print cookbooks for another store. She might take umbrage if you ask if the shop is a hobby that got out of hand. No. While she has her personal collection, she’s a cookbook pro who provides a service. An essential service, we’d say.

Books are more or less organized by national cuisine or subject (cheese, baking, etc.). Chairs are scattered around the shop so browsers can sit and peruse books. (Please — no photos of recipes. If you’re going to do that, you might as well use an internet browser at home.)

Slotnick rebuffs a question about the one essential cookbook, explaining she’d have to know the person’s taste, skill level, and so on to answer. But she warms up to the subject when we ask about the one essential book for a novice cook who is inspired to learn. She rattles off several, but seems to settle on Craig Claiborne’s Kitchen Primer. “It’s nice to have pictures that show how to do something,” she says. She homes in on a nice vintage hardback copy and opens it at random to admire Tom Funk’s marvelously clear illustrations.

The old-fashioned, hand-drawn pictures seem perfect. Like the text, they offer instruction with a human touch.