Grand Livre De Cuisine [Hardcover]

Alain Ducasse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2004

Today, Ducasse feeds his passion for cooking through restaurants all over the world and a professional-level cooking school. He is now ready to bring his know-how and enthusiasm to professional chefs and experienced home cooks, providing 700 recipes from French and Mediterranean cuisine that incorporate 100 basic ingredients and use 10 major cooking styles. Each dish is described in full, with recipes for accompaniments included; complete instructions for plating the entire dish are given as well. An extensive appendix offers an encyclopedia of ingredients as well as basic recipes (sauces, stocks, compound butters, and so on). Written in collaboration with five acclaimed French chefs and illustrated with more than 1,000 photographs and original drawings, Grand Livre de Cuisine will be an indispensable reference - and inspiration - for years to come.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alain Ducasse is regarded throughout the world as one of the most prominent French chefs, and he is driven to share his passion through his businesses. Along with three gourmet restaurants, Restaurant Plaza Athenee in Paris, Le Louis XV in Monaco, and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House in New York, he has also created more than 15 new concept restaurants worldwide and a professional-level cooking school.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1080 pages
• Publisher: Ducasse Books (December 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2848440007
• ISBN-13: 978-2848440002
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.4 x 3.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,451,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A shrunken reprint, November 20, 2007

By 

musiclover (Hayward, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Grand Livre de Cuisine: Alain Ducasse's Culinary Encyclopedia (Hardcover)

This book IS what I thought it would be, and it is NOT what I thought it would be. It IS Alain Ducasse's Culinary Encyclopedia, but it is NOT the original version. This is the shrunken version. Literally. The original is large and lush, with beautiful photography and high quality glossy paper. That book measures 12 x 9.4 inches, weighs 12 lbs. and costs a lot of money.

This version is 9.6 x 8 inches, is printed on inferior paper, and the photography doesn't reproduce well at that size. It costs a third of what the original does.

On the plus side, it IS a complete reprint, which means that exactly the same information is in the book. Every page is exact, just smaller.

This type of book (the original, that is) is generally for the collector or professional chef. Any cookbook over a hundred bucks has a pretty rarified market. At the very least, this reprint makes the recipes and the techniques of one of the world's greatest chefs accessible to a wider audience. Just don't expect it to be the big, lush volume you hoped it was. You get what you pay for.

Five stars for the information, one star for the presentation, three overall.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, if bulky, February 27, 2006

By 

Christopher F. Orman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grand Livre De Cuisine (Hardcover)

High priced absurdity? Hardly. Compared to Adria's or Pierre Gagnaire's texts, Ducasse's tome reminds me of a blown up, bulky version of the French Laundry. There are no foams. There are no overtly experimental techniques; save the odd sous vide recipe.
What it does include is classical french cuisine, refined and recontextualized. I completely disagree with the reviewer who chastised the release, discussing elements which simply are not present in this text. Truthfully, there is nothing here but material to elucidate cooking. Likewise apropos the translation, the ingredients, proportions, and techniques are perfect. Certainly there are some problematic semantic turns(words out of place, or occassional misspellings), but in general it is rather lucid.
As a whole, I can only say the size and weight of the book decreases my star rating. It would have been far more manageable and clearer if broken into several volumes. None the less the photography and the depth of these recipes(which include cleaning and butchering techniques) make up for it. I would wager that years from now, this volume will be viewed as the 21st centuries answer to the grand Escoffier tome.

73 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars High Priced Baloney, March 11, 2005

By 

Peter Hartjens (St. Michaels, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grand Livre De Cuisine (Hardcover)

In theory, this is a wonderful book. However, unless you know
French and have been cooking for a hundred years, you might want to think twice before shelling out this kind of money. The translation is AWFUL, with some recipe cmponents being translated two ways in two different places. There are hundreds of instances where the translation is simply WRONG. If you read French, you can sometimes puzzle it out.

The index is also inadequate. There are multiple components to many dishes that really could/should be stand-alone recipes. Yet in this encyclopedia, it is impossible to find these components without having memorized the main dish's title.

The pictures are wonderful. There are lots and lots of wonderful recipes in here, but somebody should have turned this over to some English speaking chefs and recipe writers before letting it hit the streets.

Big disappointment, and for what is probably the most expensive cookbook ever, it shouldn't be.

Buyer beware.