The Cook's Encyclopaedia Book

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 DavidsonRead More