Cooking Ingredients . The Ultimate Photographic Reference Guide for Cooks and Food Lovers [Unknown Binding]

Christine Ingram (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 512 pages
• Publisher: Hermes House (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0681783230
• ISBN-13: 978-0681783232
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,205,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars cooking ingredients, August 20, 2004

By 

Alley Sam (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cooking Ingredients . The Ultimate Photographic Reference Guide for Cooks and Food Lovers

Full color photographs and detailed descriptions of every food imaginable. Very thorough book and a valuable resource for your cooking collection. I use it frequently as a resource and also enjoy just sitting with it and reading.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best everything in one place reference I've come across, November 30, 2007

By 

Dave L "Dave" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cooking Ingredients . The Ultimate Photographic Reference Guide for Cooks and Food Lovers

Despite Hermes House having a huge variety of "cookbooks" this is only a reference book, and all the better for it.

As another reviewer noted, many of the descriptions in this book carry the British names for some food. Also they expressed the opinion that some items are not available in the US...which may be in the case in flyover country, but if you are in an area with an active food culture, this book is a great.

The section on cheese alone makes this a great book to have. It manages to to outshine most books I have seen that are solely devoted to cheese, which is saying a lot.

Therefore I have to disagree on the usefulness of this book, from my perspective as a culinary school grad, and having worked breakfasts, lunches, dinners, banquets, private parties and seasonal black and white events at country clubs, restaurants, bistros, and even institutional venues.

This book will not teach you how to cook, but has just enough info on techniques and tools to get you going in the right direction.

There is no such thing as an all inclusive book on food, but this is very good book to start with. The lack of recipes is a plus in my opinion, because I have found the more recipes a book has, the less useful it is as a reference.

You can find any recipe for any dish on the internet a hundred times over. You will NEVER find as much info on foods in one place as you will with this book. A good compliment to The Food Lovers Companion, which is the gold standard for many, but has its own set of limitations and shortcomings.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Basic reference, January 4, 2005

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cooking Ingredients . The Ultimate Photographic Reference Guide for Cooks and Food Lovers

This book is a picture reference book of ingredients that are commonly available to or used by British cooks. It is arranged into sections according to types of foods: eggs and dairy, cheese, fish, meat and poultry, vegetables, beans and grains, pasta and wrappers, fruits and nuts, herbs and spices, condiments and oils, tea and coffee, and kitchen equipment. Each item in a chapter receives a 3-5 sentence description, sometimes longer, that may help the cook identify the food, select the best variety or cut, or store the item appropriately. The descriptions may also include trivia or suggestions for when or how to serve the item. There are few, if any, recipes, although there are frequent feature boxes throughout the book demonstrating and describing preparation tasks like how to roast peppers or truss a bird.

The book was clearly written for a British audience, and not a very knowledgeable one at that since the information provided is very basic. For the American edition, the publisher has tried to patch up the Britishisms by providing American names for such things as aubergines (eggplants) beside the British names. Although the book seems to aim toward completeness, it overlooks many items that are common fare for Americans, such as collard greens. The attempts to Americanize the terminology were also far from complete. In addition, at times, it seemed the author was trying to describe things she had never tasted, like pomelos, which she suggests taste like grapefruit but may need more sugar- -actually, they are sweeter than grapefruit and lack its bitterness. Ingram also describes the texture of a snake fruit as being creamy; while the color is creamy, the fruit itself is more on the crunchy side. These inaccuracies lead me to wonder how many other questionable factoids she has included. Nevertheless, the pictures, while not depicting all items (especially not the rarer ones) are high quality and there is an index. If you are moving to England and you are concerned about what to call the foods there or the kinds of foods you might encounter in a supermarket there, perhaps this book may be of use to you.