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Learn to COOK - The Escoffier Cookbook and Guide to the Fine Art of Cookery: For Connoisseurs, Chefs, Epicures Complete With 2973 Recipes
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List Price: $25.95
Our Price: $17.13
Your Save: $ 8.82 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 7 to 10 days
Manufacturer: Crown Publishers, Inc.
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5944
EAN: 9780517506622
ISBN: 0517506629
Label: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Manufacturer: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 923
Publication Date: 1969-06-01
Publisher: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Release Date: 2041-11-13
Studio: Crown Publishers, Inc.
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Editorial Reviews:
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An American translation of the definitive Guide Culinaire, the Escoffier Cookbook includes weights, measurements, quantities, and terms according to American usage. Features 2,973 recipes.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Bible of French cooking
Comment: This book is great for the foodie that enjoys reading about cooking and recipes. I have my book marked and tagged thruout with notes on techniques etc. A great reference book and just fun to read. Some of the recipes are a kick to read and hopefully someday I'll beable to try them all, or at least more of them..... I highly recommend this book for the true foodie.
Customer Rating:
Summary: classic but dated
Comment: The English language version of the Escoffier Cookbook appears to be a literal translation from the French and is sometimes difficult to understand due to long and sometimes awkward sentence structure. The recipes for French cooking foundations (consommes)are clearly, if not begrudgingly offered for the benefit of the uninitiated. In a different time, this would be a handy tome for learning the detailed art of French cooking. Unfortunately, work and other life priorities keeps me from enjoying this book as it was intended to be appoached; that is, as a singular focus borne of culinary passion. I would recommend this book to those who have the requisite time and resources (e.g. shin of older beef) readily available to them. Otherwise, I have a newfound appreciation for the art of French cooking and will make it a priority to at least try a few haute French restaurants near me. While I don't believe the brasserie can ever be replaced, the classic "high French" repertoire clearly deserves respect. Escoffier, the cuisine's devoted representative, merits equal treatment. Proceed with caution, but proceed if you dare. This book likely holds many secrets to culinary joy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Esccoffier Cookbook
Comment: Fantastic! A "must read" for ANY chef or "want-to-be chef"! Highly recommended! This is the Bible of the culinary world! Don't even go into a kitchen without reading and memorizing Esccoffier First!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bible of Modern French Cuisine, at a budget price! Buy It.
Comment: `The Escoffier Cookbook' is an English translation of the `Guide Culinaire' by the renowned French chef, Auguste Escoffier, the most important figure in modern professional French culinary practice. One may argue that Antonin Careme is more important simply because Careme influenced Escoffier and write many books on culinary technique, but I suspect every culinary professional reads Escoffier today and few outside academic circles read Careme's original works.
One of the most reliable symptoms of Escoffier's importance can be found in the first essay of Michael Ruhlman's `The Soul of a Chef' dealing with the Certified Master Chef examination given at the Culinary Institute of America. Whenever the candidates were presented with a problem in an unfamiliar area and had the night to consider the problem, they consulted Escoffier for their preparation. This is because most of the situations in the problems came straight from the practice defined by Escoffier a 100 years ago.
For these and many more reasons, this book is THE standard by which all French culinary issues should be judged. Therefore, my review is less on why this is a good book and more on why you should pay attention to it if you are serious about cooking.
For starters, this 920 page book with 2,973 recipes lists for about $20. Admittedly, the text describing many of those recipes is pretty terse, being based on techniques from one or more earlier recipes. Therefore, you must be committed to really getting involved with this book and mining it for its riches rather than expecting to make a quick search for a particular recipe you can copy or scan at the library on the way home. Of course, if you are already a fairly experienced chef, many of the recipes suggestions are all you need to follow up with a good improvisation based on techniques at your fingertips.
The very first thing you learn from this book is that professional French culinary doctrine was concerned about lightness, using fresh ingredients, and eliminating excess fat a century ago. This is not an invention of modern nutritionists and Alice Waters. The next most important lesson is less surprising. This is the importance of sauces in French cuisine and therefore, the importance of stocks, fonds, consommés, essences, and glazes. James Peterson's great book, `Sauces' may be just a bit more accessible to modern readers, but this is the book from which he got all his material. Stocks, sauces, and many other basics are covered in `Part I Fundamental Elements of Cooking'. These 135 pages should be read from front to back by anyone who is remotely serious in doing good cooking and adapting the ability to improvise with food.
Readers like myself who are impressed by Alton Brown's footwork with details about cooking technique will be happy to discover that the French like Escoffier knew a thing or two about careful observation and measuring, as when Escoffier discusses temperatures of various frying media such as butter, various animal fats, and vegetable oils.
Next comes `Part II Recipes and Methods of Procedure', organized by how various dishes typically appear on standard menus. This means chapters on:
Appetizers
Eggs
Soups
Fish and Seafood
Releves and Entrees of Meats
Poultry and Game
Roasts and Salads
Vegetables and Starchy Foods
Appetizers and Snacks
Desserts and Sweets
A quick look at the egg chapter shows 192 egg recipes, almost as many as in my favorite book dedicated entirely to egg recipes. There are 22 recipes dedicated entirely to poaching. These counts just suggest the depth to which Escoffier covers this subject, as many recipes will refer to one or more recipes in other parts of the book, as we find for `Careme Hard-Boiled Eggs' which involve a timbale crust and a Nantua sauce from other chapters. One small symptom of how `modern' Escoffier is with his recipes is in his recipe for scrambled eggs. Many authorities, including James Beard, will insist on scrambled eggs being done in a water bath (bain-marie). Escoffier allows that it can be done on direct heat, as long as the cook is especially careful with using only moderate heat.
One thing you may have noticed from some of my quotes is that you will need or expect to acquire knowledge of basic French cooking terms to understand this book, even in this excellent English translation. Learning the term `releves' will take you deep into the history of French cuisine and how that contrasts with the Russian style of service popularized in France by Antonin Careme. The Russian style of one course following another became so popular that today we are inclined to think that is a French invention. Not so! By the way, entrees are dishes based on tender cuts of meat and releves are braised, poached, or roasted dishes done with less tender cuts of meat. You will not be able to dip into a recipe at random in this book without a firm handle on terms such as poach, braise, sautee, croquette, blanch, julienne, and several other terms.
This is the one book I believe a food lover should unequivocally have on their bookshelves. Cook all you want from Saint Julia's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', but come to Escoffier to really understand the underpinnings of French culinary practice.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating to read, but not a "cookbook" in the modern sense
Comment: "The Escoffier Cookbook" is a heavily abridged American version of Auguste Escoffier's 1903 book "Guide Culinaire". It is a fascinating look at the art of professional European cookery at the beginning of the 20th century.
However, to appreciate this book fully, it's important to understand exactly who it was written for. Escoffier's original guide was never for a second intended for the home cook. Escoffier was a pioneer with respect to the education of professional chefs, and originally wrote this book for the use of those working in grand houses, in hotels, on ocean liners, and in restaurants who might not have had access to contemporary recipes. Accordingly, the original book does not attempt to teach basic cooking or food preparation techniques. The American translation does include some details on cooking techniques and utensils unfamiliar to the average American chef (such as poeleing, worth the cost of the book alone, and the old French form of braising), but even in the translation it is assumed that the reader is a trained, experienced chef.
The recipes themselves are clear and simple to follow, but represent only a small subset of French cooking of the early 20th century. An earlier reviewer mentioned that there was no recipe for onion soup; this is true, but it should be understood that onion soup would never have been accepted by the class of restaurant patron Escoffier cooked for. Much of what has arrived on this side of the Atlantic as "French cooking" - dishes such as pot-au-feu, onion soup, and steak frites - is distinctly middle-class, and consequently would have been rejected by the clientele of quality restaurants of the time as being unspeakably boorish. Escoffier personally enjoyed bourgeois cooking, but as an astute, intelligent businessman he provided the haute cuisine his clients demanded.
One interesting difference between modern cooking and the cooking featured in this book is that Escoffier uses few spices, and indeed declaims on the foolishness of using large amounts of spices in meat dishes. This appears bizarre from our vantage point, but Escoffier had sound economic reasons for his proscriptions. Most diners of the time grew up in the days before refrigeration, when old deteriorating meat was heavily spiced to make it palatable. Fresh, unspiced meat was a sign of the highest quality. The association between strong spices and poor quality was powerful enough to survive long into the 20th century, as any reader of a 1950s American cookbook can attest.
As for the recipes themselves, I doubt that many of them could be prepared by the North American home cook. Most of us cannot afford (if we can even find) foie gras, truffles, or capons, and few have espagnole sauce or fish fumet available at all times. However, many recipes can be adapted for the modern cook - using cepes or porcini mushrooms for truffles, for instance - and those that can be prepared really are delicious.
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