Customer Reviews

Classical Cooking The Modern Way: Methods and Techniques, Third Edition

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Classical Cooking ("Der Lehrbuch der Küche", "Technologie culinaire") is easily recognized by most hotel/F&B professionals trained in Western Europe and often just called the "Pauli".

Unfortunately, the American publisher of the 3rd edition (John Wiley) has choosen to split the book into two volumes. The recipes are actually the second half of Classical Cooking and while they are consistently good, the really amazing part of the original version happens to be the theory section that professional ethics, sanitation, and safety, kitchen management, food descriptions and purchasing, nutrition, menu planning, accounting, before going to cooking theory.

Apparently, John Wiley intends on publishing this content at some point, but it is a real shame that they chose to A.) break up the book in two, and B.) publish the recipes first. It is the missing theory and methods section that teaches the fundamentals of running a restaurant, hotel, or institutional kitchen.

One excellent solution is to seek out the out-of-print 2nd edition (Van Nostrand Reinhold) in used bookstores. The complete 2nd edition (which has both theory and recipes, just like the German and French editions used in Swiss hotel management schools) merits its reputation as possibly the most important book for an F&B manager to own.