So, for a somewhat different post, albeit still on the topic of this thread, someone on another forum asked for cooking book recommendations. My response was a series of two posts on books that I have and find useful -- one that basically contained a series of mini-reviews on a good number of books on cooking.
Note that I don't say "cookbooks." None of them are the mess of organized recipes that we're all familiar with.
Since I figure this list might be of interest to people here and have already done most of the effort in writing this, I'm editing it for reposting -- mostly doing things like removing references to the ongoing discussion and/or previous posters. I'm also cleaning up a few things as I notice them, have expanded a section or two, and am largely redoing the organization and transitions to fit the lack of context.
To start with, I have a personal trinity of books that I think cover almost all the bases. If there's any three books I'd bring up to *any* foodie, it's these.
Harold McGee's
On Food and Cooking is a classic, a practical (and literal in many cooking schools) textbook on damn near every cooking technique and practice there is. It covers not only what to do, but the "hows" and "whys" of each technique as applied to, again, damn near everything. It even includes sections on various ingredients, how to pick them out, what to do with them, etc. It is, however,
dense as ever-loving fuck, as you might expect out of an 883-page textbook that covers, or attempts to cover,
everything. It contains relatively few illustrations, and the text is pretty small.
In other words, it's basically a textbook (ha!) example of a door-stopper in which literally every sentence is important. That makes it... not exactly the best... book to learn from, and a bit of a slog to try and read through, but an
amazing reference.
It's also a historically significant book. I have the second edition, but the
first was the seminal book on bringing science and chemistry into the kitchen. Yeah, people had studied the chemistry of food before, but this was quite literally the book that started the trend of using that knowledge to improve food and train chefs.
The second book in my "trinity" is Wiley Publishing, Inc's
The Visual Food Encyclopedia. This is, simply put, an ingredient book -- and a very good one at that. The organization is a bit iffy, more optimized for browsing than for looking things up, meaning that I usually need the index to help me find things, but the entries provide extensive information on what to do with various ingredients -- how to pick good ones at the market, a few suggestions on how to use them in cooking, how to properly store things, basic nutrition information -- along with illustrations that
really can help with questions like, "When is this ripe?"
(Although, unfortunately, not all of the illustrations are perfect that way.)
Obviously it's not comprehensive -- it's only 685 pages and mostly covers ingredients that are commonly used in at least one major national cuisine somewhere in the world -- but it's still a very,
very useful reference for those times when you're working with an ingredient that you don't normally use much or don't have much experience with. It's also good for ideas and for showing people who don't know what you used in that recipe just what you did.
The third book in that "trinity" is Page and Dorneburg's
The Flavor Bible.
On Food and Cooking is about techniques,
The Visual Food Encyclopedia is about ingredients...
The Flavor Bible is about ingredient
combinations. Sure, the first 36 pages of the book (which is 380 pages long) are about what goes into the experience of a dish and the things you should take into account when developing a new recipe. Almost all of the rest -- 338 pages of the book -- is dedicated to a lengthy listing of ingredients, quick tips regarding them, techniques to use with them (for instance, tomatoes: Bake, broil, confit, fry, grill, raw, roast, saute, stew), chef's commentaries on using them, and -- for by far the majority of the volume -- the other flavors and ingredients that combine well with them.
There's an
incredible amount of information packed into each entry. The ingredients most commonly used with whatever you're looking up -- as determined by a survey of restaurants and their recipes -- are bolded. There's even a "flavor affinities" section for common three-or-more ingredient combinations.
When I want to come up with a new recipe,
The Flavor Bible is often the first thing I consult. When I want to figure out what to do with some item, it's usually
The Visual Food Encyclopedia. When I want to know how to do something, or to understand some recipe, it's
On Food and Cooking.
Basically? They're all very strong recs, and basically function as the perfect references for any cook.
But they're also not the be-all, end-all of cooking... or even my library.
Cook's Illustrated's
The Science of Good Cooking, subtitled "Master 50 simple concepts to enjoy a lifetime of success in the kitchen."
The title is pretty accurate, despite the issues with the "50 simple concepts" side of things. This is a much-expanded take on material that often gets a sentence or two in
On Food and Cooking. It's written to a much lower level, with many clearer explanations. It's also
far less exhaustive, basically focusing on mere 50 tricks/concepts/techniques... but they were selected to be
useful ones.
And yeah, those slashes were necessary. The main problem with the title is that there's not much pragmatic coherence in what counts as a "concept" in that list. They're generally simple sentences, with detailed explanations which can range from tricks (e.g. #20, "Starch keeps eggs from curdling" in dishes like quiches, soups, and pastry creams) to widely ranging sets of techniques (e.g. #26, "Potato starches can be controlled," which details a number of techniques for getting potatoes to do what you want).
What the book
does do, though, is show you a lot of simple things to keep in mind when cooking... and does so in a reasonably instructional manner.
On Food and Cooking is a textbook and reference, best used either as something to consult or in conjunction with actual instruction.
The Science of Good Cooking is the sort of book you can teach yourself with.
It also includes a number of recipes -- 400, according to the cover -- to illustrate the concepts and show how they play out.
Speaking of books you can teach yourself with, there's also Jeff Potter's
Cooking for Geeks. The book's highly instructional, but kinda all over the place. Sometimes it reads like a science text, sometimes it reads like a cooking instructional, and sometimes it reads like somebody invited Bill Nye, in his full TV persona, into a kitchen. And while it's not
disorganized, its organization
is very idiosyncratic and has little to do with anything you'd find elsewhere.
This isn't a
bad thing, per se. If you're the sort of person who likes to watch
Mythbusters for fun, or if you're working with a kid who enjoys science class, it's a fun way to teach or learn a
lot of good material. It also covers a lot of basics that most books won't bother with (e.g. it has a page on knife maintenance and sharpening, and another on the various types of pots and pans). Some people I know swear by the book. I... think it's more a book for beginners (or geeks) to learn from and develop skills with than anything I can use personally.
That said, the organization issues undermine its use as a reference, and there are other books that I've been recommended as better alternatives (e.g.
The Food Lab, which I haven't reviewed here because I haven't had time to actually read and go over it).
Samin Nosrat's
Salt Fat Acid Heat can fill a similar role for people of a different personality type, as it's full more of storytelling and practical advice than the science and experimentation than Potter's work. It attempts to reduce the "essence" of cooking to the mastery of four elements (the title tells you what they are), but more as a mnemonic than as a form of reductionism. Its real value is in its attempt to capture -- and teach -- the
feel of cooking, and the intuitive understanding and control that real cooks develop over time.
Does it manage to? Dunno. I had that long before I ever touched the thing. It's a good pragmatic book, though, especially for beginners, and it covers a lot of techniques in detail while remaining relatively easy-to-understand and not becoming at all dry.
Finally, there's Dorenburg and Page's
other well-known book on cooking (they're the pair that did the
Flavor Bible, above). Unlike the others in the list,
Becoming a Chef (I have the Revised Edition, copyright 2003) isn't really about how to work a kitchen (although it does have recipes). Instead, it's about the experience of... well, becoming a professional chef. It's about the paths people take to get there, reflections on the challenges they face (in and out of the kitchen), how they learn the craft, how they think about their customers... and even has an insert on how they deal with cranky asshole customers.
There is a
lot of history in that book. Pages 24-27 feature a timeline of various ethnic cuisines... oh, Hell. I'll just quote the introduction:
Becoming a Chef Wrote:The following list indicates the decade each type of cuisine first received its own heading in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, along with characteristic (not comprehensive!) ingredients and/or flavor combinations represented in the recipes included. All names of the types of cuisine are indicated as originally published, however politically incorrect or inaccurate they may be now--further underscoring the fact that times change!
There's similar discussion of the development of cooking schools as institutions... etc., etc.
I still think it's an awesome book on cooking. It's just... umm... probably not what you're looking for if you want a stack of books to keep in your kitchen. On the other hand, I can definitely see it used that way... or sections anyway.
And that's about that. Hopefully you guys find this list useful... or at least interesting. Yes, I have more books lying around, even more "proper" cookbooks. These are just the ones I'd recommend and mention to someone looking to round out their collection... or to learn to cook.
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