Customer Reviews

Culinary Biographies: A Dictionary of the World's Great Historic Chefs, Cookbook Authors and Collectors, Farmers, Gourmets, Home Economists, Nutritionists, Restaurateurs, Philosophers, Physicians, Scientists, Writers, and Others Who Influenced the Way We Eat Today

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If you get a look at it in person, you can easily see why editor Alice Arndt wanted to self-publish. The book is beautiful: cover, paper, illustrations, typesetting. Of course, you'd also get it for the contents.

Culinary Biographies is an encyclopedia of hundreds of people who had a major influence on the history of food. Mostly chefs and cookbook writers, but also some major patrons, nutritionist and doctors.

Why I was thrilled to get the book -- and why I corresponded with Alice before it was published -- is that it contains the most material I've ever seen on the influential people of Asian cuisine. This is information I've been unable to find elsewhere (see some earlier posts on this board).

So, if you are into food history, you need this book. Better, if you have a friend who's into food and history, it would make a great gift.

Plenty of books cover culinary history and within these usually are scattered references to cooks who have influenced the genre over the decades - but nowhere else will you find a collection devoted entirely to culinary biographies, and nowhere else will the combined scholarship of over eighty culinary scholars achieve this result. Here are all the pro names you'd expect to read about, from Betty Crocker to Fannie Farmer, plus those from other countries lesser known (but no less important) such as Erna Horn or Kenneth Lo. From cookbook authors to farmers, restauranteurs, scientists and food writers, CULINARY BIOGRAPHIES is packed with insights, with each biography including not just a survey of the culinary figure's life, but an overview of contributions and influences, providing a good bit of period history in the process.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch