The New Food Lover's Companion (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: petit suisse, boiling syrup immersed, bakeware materials, United States, Pasta Glossary, The French (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This fourth edition of a standard guide (formerly called Food Lover’s Companion) revises many existing entries and expands the total number of entries to 6,700.  It is essentially a dictionary of various ingredients, from herbs and spices to wines and desserts. It also includes a plethora of terms about cooking techniques. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order and vary in length from a couple of lines to a couple of pages. Each includes a definition and sometimes an explanation of the topic as well as pronunciation of the term. A 70-page appendix covers all sorts of interesting and useful information and helps make the book worthwhile just for the extras: ingredient equivalents and substitutions; high-altitude adjustments and boiling points; conversion formulas and charts; important temperature information for grilling, frying, and baking; seasoning suggestions; a food-additives directory; and several meat charts. The volume concludes with a bibliography. The entries, found between abalone and zwieback, vary from the pedestrian daily variety of food items, like coffee, flour, and spaghetti, to the rare and exotic, such as berbere (an Ethiopian spice), mojama (salt-cured tuna from southern Spain), and a Tom and Jerry (a hot drink made of beaten eggs, hot milk or water, a type of liquor like brandy or bourbon, and sugar and spices, with nutmeg sprinkled on top).  The Herbsts have written several other culinary best-sellers, including Cooking Smart (Harper, 1992), The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide (Broadway, 1998), and The New Wine Lover’s Companion (Barron’s, 2003), to name a few. If you don’t have this book for your collection, it is surely time to add it, as the previous edition was regarded by Bon Appétit magazine as “one of the best reference books” and “a must for every cook’s library.” At such a reasonable price, this book is a mandatory purchase for any library supporting a culinary program and is highly recommended for all other academic and public libraries. --Christy Donaldson

Review

From the Associated Press article “A Book Worth Devouring”





“You, too, can be an expert, for less than 20 bucks.





Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst’s Food Lover’s Companion has served as an indispensable reference to the food world since the first edition was published more than a decade ago. It’s a bible for food writers, and it belongs in the home kitchen, too.





An updated forth edition with more than 6,700 entries recently was released, continuing the tome’s tradition of helping home and professional cooks make sense of myriad techniques and ingredients.





As valuable as the dictionary-style entries that form the core of the book are the appendices, which include a pasta glossary, a guide for reading food labels, illustrated charts depicting cuts of meat, and substitution and measurement charts.”
—Associated Press




Praise for previous editions.
"From 'abalone' to 'zwieback,' Sharon Tyler Herbst lists nearly 6,000 culinary terms in the newly published third edition of her classic Food Lover's Companion. Hands down, it is the ultimate accessible cooking and dining reference book."
—Mat Schaffer, Boston Herald, March 2001

"The New Food Lover's Companion is an updated version of this amazingly comprehensive encyclopedia of everything you ever wondered or will need to know about culinary terms and ingredients. My old copy is more dog-eared than any favorite cookbook, and referred to almost daily...Dedicated foodies can't do without it."
—Susan Miller, The Home Monthly, May 2001

"If there's a culinary reference book that foodies reach for more often than Food Lover's Companion, we don't know what it would be. This mimi-tome is brimming with useful information on thousands of foods and terms, from abalone to zwei-back—including pronunciations (ZWI-bak, ZWI-bahk, SWI-bak, SWI-bahk). No surprise that the book has sold mor than 1 million copies since its debut in 1990...The new edition has 6,000 terms and a larger appendix. We especially like the pasta chart, which lists more than 100 pastas (with, thank goodness, pronunciations). Also added is a broadened pan substitution chart, expanded listings on soy foods, and more ethnic foods."
—Renee Enna, The Chicago Times, June 2001

“If you don’t have this book for your collection, it is surely time to add it, as the previous edition was regarded by Bon Appétit magazine as ‘one of the best reference books’ and ‘a must for every cook’s library.’ At such a reasonable price, this book is a mandatory purchase for any library supporting a culinary program and is highly recommended for all other academic and public libraries.”


—Booklist, January 1 & 15, 2008

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 830 pages
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series; 4 edition (August 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764135775
• ISBN-13: 978-0764135774
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fabulous Reference, December 2, 2007

By	Uitlander (Upstate New York) - See all my reviews

This is one of the most fascinating reference books I've stumbled upon in a long time. The 6700 plus entries cover everything imaginable used in food preparation. Most are non-English in origin, but a good phonetic translation is provided. The terms are not just European; this book is loaded with Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and regional U.S. terms. The descriptions may run to several paragraphs- much more than a dictionary provides- though many of these words are too obscure to appear in any other source. Furthermore, it's compact enough to be carried in a coat pocket or handbag. If you eat in foreign restaurants even occasionally, this book will pay for itself in a month. (Your waiter will not know how most of these dishes are made.) It is not a recipe book, but it contains every culinary term that has ever seen print. If you are a novice in the kitchen, you may learn what many cookbooks assume you understand. Also, the appendix is loaded with all sorts of useful metrics and categories. The Herbsts' have compiled an indispensible source for anyone curious about what they eat.

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive food dictionary, but not as up-to-date as it could be., January 8, 2008

By	AlexanderBanning (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews

This reference has been lauded in many venues, and it truly is a fascinating resource. However, after spending time examining the book (4th ed., 2007), I am noticing several entries that are out-of-date. For example, the entry on brains does not mention mad cow disease. In contrast, the latest _Joy of Cooking_ (2006) not only notes this, it also warns readers to avoid eating brains for that reason. As another example, several entries in the bibliography refer to older editions of books that now have recognized newer editions. Take, for example, the listing of _La Methode_ and _La Technique_, both by Jacques Pepin. These two works have been combined and published as _Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques_. As a third example, the appendix on food label terms does not list trans fats in the listing of different fats found on food labels. All of these examples make me wonder about things I haven't caught. I hope that all of this information is updated and corrected in a fifth edition.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference, February 22, 2008

By	eLoWeeZ (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

IMO, every food lover out there should get this book. It is a great reference and very useful for just about any food related terms out there. I have purchased this book 4 times (3 of which were previous editions) to give as gifts to my friends and they all loved it!