Customer Reviews

Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques & Recipes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Keeping Food Fresh" is a compilation of recipes for preserving food contributed by readers of a French gardening magazine. It was originally published in French and has been translated to English with care. Recipes for frozen or canned products were omitted to allow a focus on older, more traditional methods.

The material presented is perhaps best used by the American reader as a point of reference when evaluating other recipes. It also could serve as the starting point for experimentation. It is not a cookbook in that the recipes come from many sources and do not appear to have been checked in a test kitchen. Some of the quantities betray their metric roots, since few recipes in this country would call for 11 pounds of an ingredient.

Some recipes clearly do not meet USDA safety guidelines, as is pointed out in the editorial comments.

Those who appreciate Eliot Coleman's writing should realize that his writing in this book is limited to the introductory material.

Overall, I found the book to be an interesting read, with much unique knowledge not available elsewhere. It approaches "primary source" material in that the traditional family recipes have undergone little editing, thus their historical fabric is more effectively captured.

I can't recommend this book highly enough! If you are interested in delicious, safe ways to preserve food without the need for a freezer, canner, or other equipment, this is the book for you. Written in a wonderfully personable style by gardeners and farmers who've been using these recipes all their lives.

The recipies in this book were submitted by French magazine readers, and cover a wide variety of traditional preservation techniques: preserving with vinegar, oil and sugar; preserving with alcohol; preserving by lactic fermentation; and several other techniques.

If you're looking for straightforward, easy, safe recipies for preserving food, you'll find this book a mixed blessing. Many recipies omit quantities, and few of them have been tried in any sort of test kitchen. Most importantly, a number of these traditional recipies involve important food-safety issues--as the book itself repeatedly makes clear. You will, however, find many excellent ideas in the chapters on oil, vinegar, sugar and alcohol.

If, however, you're interested in traditional food-preservation techniques, this book is uniformly excellent. The chapter on lactic fermentation of vegetables is fascinating, and the diversity of preservation techniques is remarkable.

If you're like me you missed learning the ways of preserving food without canning or freezing at your mother or grandmother's elbow. This book is an excellent reference for an experienced cook to learn some forgotten or abandoned ways of food preservation.

The translation is well done, the information and instructions are very clear for me. I'm especially pleased with the suggestions on about how long you can keep the food when preserved by each recipe.


I'm looking forward to trying something different with the fruits of this years harvest.

This is a great compendium of old-world preserving techniques that can still be used today. A great resource for kitchen gardeners who treasure their ability to feed themselves around the year with their homegrown and preserved produce! Low-energy techniques make it possible to preserve without depending on electricity.

This book is available, brand new, from Seed Savers Exchange, www.seedsavers.org, for $16.95. I am looking at the current, paper catalog and was astounded to see the prices being asked on Amazon. Tsk.

This book is excellent but has one major flaw. It does not even mention meat! The title should seriously be changed to "Keeping Fruits and Vegetables Fresh" or "Keeping Plant Foods Fresh" It is certainly a great resource on that subject and I reccomend it to anyone for that purpose but the use of the all encompassing word "food" in the title suggests more. I was mislead by the title and must give it a low rating just to alert people to this fact so others don't make the same mistake as I purchased it with an interest in preserving wild game and was utterly dissapointed when I opened it's pages.