The Cook's Encyclopaedia: Ingredients and Processes - Hardcover

Stobart, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1902304004 ISBN 13: 9781902304007

Publisher: Grub Street Publishing, 1998

Synopsis

Arranged alphabetically from abalone to zampone, the majority of entries in this cook's encyclopaedia deal with ingredients and processes used in cooking. All of the common processes from bottling, brewing, brining, curing, smoking and vacuuming are described, and although this is not a recipe book, some recipes have been included to illustrate the use of an ingredient, or how to prepare it in ways other than those commonly used in British or American cooking. The aim is to provide cooks with a good knowledge of the fundamentals of cookery - ingredients. The book lists as wide a range of ingredients as possible, provides information on their background, identifies their particular characteristics, and offers advice to cooks who buy unfamiliar ingredients.

About this title

Review

Here in 450 pages is a descriptive compendium of just about everything we eat and how we cook it or otherwise transform it from a lower state of edibility to a higher. Hundreds, if not thousands, of ingredients are described, with English and foreign synonyms and scientific names; recipes are given in many cases to illustrate the use of the foodstuff in question.

Cooking processes are explained in great and illuminating detail. The aim is both to entertain and to instruct--in particular, to give a sense of the essence and individuality of each ingredient. Tom Stobart has travelled widely, both as an explorer and a film maker, and his book is everywhere informed by an eye for telling details and an ability to evoke the background and context of the ingredients he describes. One of the reasons why the book came to be written, he points out in his Introduction, is his love of open-air markets around the world.

The very comprehensiveness of The Cook's Encyclopaedia invites one to play a kind of game, finding items that haven't been included. Sea cucumber? "...a holothurian, a roughly sausage-shaped relative of the sea-anemone..." Oh, all right, then. Carageen? "...a tufted and fan-like seaweed..." Isinglass? "..an equivalent of gelatine made from the swim-bladders of sturgeon..." This is an endlessly fascinating and browsable book. Nigella? "A plain-looking species of love-in-the-mist with creamy flowers..."--Robin Davidson

Review

"'A Must, comprehensive, well-organized and well-written...This is a serious and important work of reference, but it is also extremely readable. Those who acquire it will find themselves dipping into it constantly and that it affords them as much pleasure as instruction.' Alan Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food"

Edition details

• Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1902304004
• ISBN 13: 9781902304007
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464