On the Shelf: Culinary Reference Books to Add to Your Wish List

Some of my most stained, earmarked and worn books are not the beautiful books with lots of colorful, mouthwatering photos and recipes that inspire. It’s the quiet reference books that, at times, can substitute as doorstops with their behemoth size yet lead to many culinary epiphanies.

Now, you may be thinking of course she loves these books; she’s an aspiring food writer. But, culinary reference books are so much more. From silly trivia to mundane ingredients, they take you behind the scenes and can inspire you in the kitchen.

And, they’re necessary tools if you want to become skilled at creating your own recipes.

So here’s my quick list:

Food Lover’s Companion
Organized from A to Z, this culinary dictionary provides definitions of nearly 6,000 food, drink and culinary terms in its compact 758 pages. The listings, which range from aemono (a Japanese dish served as a chilled appetizer) to zakuska (assorted Russian appetizers served with cold vodka), include pronunciations and cross-references.

This little work-horse also offers a wonderful appendix with a variety of useful tools such as ingredient equivalents – example a 2-inch piece of fresh ginger is the same as 2 tbs minced fresh ginger; common substitutions; the volume of pans by their size; altitude adjustments; temperatures for cooking meats; lists of popular retail cuts of meat; fatty acid profiles; a pasta glossary and popular seasoning suggestions.

The Penguin Companion to Food
I remember many hot summer afternoons at my grandmother’s where I would escape the sun and the un-air-conditioned stuffiness of the main floor for the quiet basement corner where grandma had a stack of old story books, and even more interesting, a collection of old encyclopedias from the 1940’s. Whether my memory is clouded by age or the fact I still don’t do well in the summer (I’m a redhead after all) – I remember loving to close my eyes and run my finger along the spine and pick a copy at random and flip it open to whatever entry I found.

That’s one of the many reasons the Penguin Companion to Food is one of my favorite culinary (and one of the largest) culinary reference books in my collection. Plus, if you’re feeling plucky, you could probably thwack someone over the head with it.

With more than 1,000 pages, the book took 20 years to produce. And like many reference books, it too is in alphabetical order. But what it does differently is delve into the cultural and historical background of not only a variety of ingredients but also of regional cuisines and other culinary oddities.

After all, it includes a listing for white trash cooking.

It also does a wonderful job, in a subtle way, of showing the culinary reader the similarities between various regions and their foods – for example, the dumpling pages illustrate how important it is across a wide variety of cultures.

Form origins and history to interesting trivia, this is a great reference book for learning more about our foodways and for randomly perusing for fun things to read – no matter how hot it is outside.

The Cooks Companion
Written by Australian Stephanie Alexander, The Cooks Companion is another whopper weighing in at almost six pounds. It’s a bit hard to find in the states because it is “the complete book of ingredients and recipes for the Australian kitchen.” But as many readers and recipe collectors will quickly realize, Australian cuisine reflects a melting pot of flavors, with slightly different influence, just as we have in the states – just with more emphasis on modern and traditional British with hint of the south seas.

The more than 1,000 pages are organized alphabetical by ingredient and the book begins with suggested equipment and the basics – which is half dictionary and half recipes. Each ingredient entry includes an introduction and/or anecdote, varieties and seasons for the ingredient, preparation notes, selection and storage, a selection of recipes and a cross-reference list to other recipes with that ingredient in the rest of the book – and most importantly, a list Alexander calls “go with” that gives a quick snapshot into classical flavor pairings specific to that ingredient.

The recipes represent simple elegance and are very ‘doable.’ My favorite listings are for a variety of Asian greens and the listing for eggs - which includes a recipe variation for making Chinese tea eggs. Of course, being a book geared toward Australians, there are some oddities in the book. Some of these are simply name-related such as witlof, which is endive, and yabbies, which are crayfish. Although, some of these oddities are truly Australian such as kangaroo and wallaby that Alexander assures us “. . . are high-quality meats.” Plus other proteins are highlighted quite extensively such as rabbit and hare and individual listings for a variety of offal such as tongue, trotters, brains, kidneys, etc.

The Flavor Bible
Long overdue, The Flavor Bible just came out this fall and it is always by my side. Authors Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg took eight years to pull together this A to Z guide of flavor profiles. The depth of understanding, research and care is illustrated throughout the book that starts with achiote and ends with zucchini. Described as “the essential guide to culinary creativity, based on the wisdom or America’s most imaginative chefs,” this guidebook takes you on a journey of tastes and flavors from a variety of regions as well as bringing them together into a fusion of ideas we can use in our own culinary adventures as we layer flavors.

Each listing includes seasonal information, a taste profile; a function – i.e. does the ingredient provide warmth or does it cool; an idea of whether the ingredient is light or heavy, quiet or loud; ideas on how the ingredient is most often prepared; and of course, the flavors that ingredient has an affinity towards and even flavor pairings to avoid.

- GE, 12/07/08