Customer Reviews

Herings Dictionary of Classical and Modern Cookery

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I find Louis Saulnier's Le Repertoire de La Cuisine to be a classic text that is too much for a novice to wade through, and Hering's Dictionary has upped it a notch, in quantity and in chaos! (Mine is the 10th Ed 1987, I'm told the newer editions are not terribly better organized.)

I enjoy both books as I like to learn about classic (Usually French) preparations and terms. There are no typical "recipes" with carefully measured ingredients and steps to produce the final product in either of these books to cook by, instead just the pertinent ingredients are listed, without quantities, to remind professional level chefs and caterers of what needs to be present.

Herrings "outdoes" Le Repertoire's Escoffier cuisine in that it has these "recipes", and additionally has recipes from other countries to generously flesh out it's pages.

Chaotic...oh yes! I looked up "Duck" in the index, and got pages 409-413. Had I also looked up "Canvasback Duck", I'd have gotten a few more recipes on p. 309...and same for "Wild Duck on p. 551, and "Rouenese Duck" on p. 508, for more recipes!

Look up "liver" and find no entries, however "Calves liver" is the ticket!

Want "eggplant"? There's no entry in the English Index for "eggplant" or "aubergine", however a wise cooks goes to the French Index, and finds "aubergines" at two sites, and still it misses a third site of "eggplant" recipes on p. 87.

If you look up "Shrimp" there's 9 recipes on p. 231, however if you are wise to "Caramote", a giant prawn of the Adriatic, one gets the 13 additional recipes on p. 174!

If the price is right, and you are a curious ferret, get both Le Repertoire and Hering's. If faced with a choice, I'd prefer Herring's for the 853 pages, over better organized Repertoire's 239 pages.

This is the top shelf of all cookbooks,please note this is not for the beginner.This book is more the professional.

Herrings is not a cookbook for the novice. It is from an era when haute cuisine ruled the kitchen and all chefs followed classical French preparations. The book assumes that the reader has a working knowledge of classical cookery. It won't tell you how to prepare what you saw on Food TV, but if you are looking for one of the finest chef's reminders ever written, grab a copy!

only book you ever need,let your creative juices GO.

Hering's has been a favorite with cooks and chef as long as I can remember,which is about 42 years.