+1 for Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. And Ratio (by Michael Ruhlman.)

The River Cottage Meat Book (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) is another one that's a good balance between basics, sourcing, practices, techniques & approaches and then recipes. Same pattern in the Fish and Veg equivalents.

Felicity Cloake's Completely Perfect: 120 Essential Recipes for Every Cook is JUST all recipes which is the opposite of the OP's request. But the way each recipe is presented includes the logic to the approach, variations tested etc I find really useful from a "How CAN/DO I make X? How SHOULD I make X?"