Culinary Artistry

by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg

Book Overview

In Culinary Artistry...Dornenburg and Page provide food and flavor pairings as a kind of steppingstone for the recipe-dependent cook...Their hope is that once you know the scales, you will be able to compose a symphony. --Molly O'Neil in The New York Times Magazine.

For anyone who believes in the potential for artistry in the realm of food, Culinary Artistry is a must-read. This is the first book to examine...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471287857
• ISBN13: 9780471287858
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 2.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

WOW, I know what all my foodie friends are getting for xmas

A serious foodie that has been perfecting her cooking skills for the last 25 years in her home kitchen writes this review. My favorite cookbook is "The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute of America. I am also a cookbook collector, with more than 500 books in my cooking library. With the many books in my cookbook collection I find that I am frequently disappointed in my recent purchases. That was not the case with this purchase. I was absolutely blown away by this book. I read the entire book in one sitting, fixating on each new idea. I have never enjoyed another book as much as I have enjoyed this one. If you are one of those people that never follows a recipe as written (guilty as charged) you are going to love this book. This book might just be my new favorite cookbook. Although this book is not a cookbook in the most literal sense of the word, it is more a guide to cooking than a cookbook. Yes, there are recipes in the book, but not as many as a traditional cookbook. The book is subdivided as follows: The Chef as Artist Meet Your Medium Composing Flavors Composing a Dish a. Why Food Matches b. Food Matches Made in Heaven c. Seasoning Matches in Heaven Composing a Menu a. Common Accompaniments to Entrees Evolving a Cuisine a. The Evolution of Leading Chef's Cuisines b. Dessert Island Lists Culinary Art as Communion Resources The tables that are included in this book are amazing. I have already copied some of the tables and moved them into my kitchen to use this evening with dinner. The table that the authors titled "Flavor Pals" is just wonderful. If you have ever been in the kitchen and wondered if particular spices and/or herbs go together, there is a table that answer those questions. There is another table titled "Flavor Enemies" that is extremely helpful. If you have ever tried to make Sauterne and Oranges because you didn't have peaches and wondered what went wrong, you know there are just some things that don't play well together. The table tells you which combinations are difficult to get right. There are too many tables in the book to discuss them all. But suffice it to say; I think that all the tables are fantastic. I will be ordering more of these for all my foodie friends that love to cook. This book would help anyone that loves to cook, and doesn't want to be constrained by a recipe. There is a great comment by Todd English that sums up how I feel about recipes, it is as follows, "having to follow a recipe was, to him, like being put on a leash." If this sums up your philosophy, quick buy the book. You will not be sorry.

"Inspiring"..."A godsend."

"FLAVOR MATCHMAKING: Some cooks look to books not for precise ingredients and specific instructions, but for inspiration. I've got a book for those cooks. It's the loftily named CULINARY ARTISTRY by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (1996), also the authors of the better known BECOMING A CHEF. It's not a cookbook per se. Nor is it a treatise on the techniques every cook ought to know. And it's certainly not a collection of culinary prose. It's more a style manual for those who need to find out if a certain something will go with another certain something. The most relevant information is found in the aptly named section 'Matches Made In Heaven.' Arranged alphabetically, the list comprises about 328 ingredients and seasonings and, for each ingredient listed, the authors provide several complementary flavors. It may not come as any surprise that the entries under beef ribs read ginger, horseradish, mustard, potatoes, tomatoes. But it is incredibly liberating, when in a chicken rut, to alight on the appropriate page and find 57 compatible ingredients for a plain old hen. When the vegetable bin is overflowing with leafy greens or I'm flummoxed over a side dish for a dinner party, I consider it a godsend to flip through the pages and decide on mustard with the greens and walnuts with the watercress. And it's inspiring to be reminded in the midst of Thanksgiving chaos that perhaps that pear dish needs a sprinkling of black pepper rather than a drizzle of honey. As with any reference work, it's not the entire book I value so much as a particular page or two in a desperate moment. The balance of the book's 426 pages are chapters on composing a dish and a menu, complete with advice from restaurant chefs. I confess I haven't read the book cover to cover. And I doubt I ever will. But it's nevertheless the one book that regularly makes the commute from office desk to kitchen counter." ...

Fantastic book but not for recipes

This book is one of the best books in my collection. It is not a recipe book, nor is it a book on presentation with pretty pictures. It is a book to help you take the next step in developing your own recipes or to use as a reference when improvising. I have found several uses for this book so far and I keep it close at hand any time I am in the kitchen. 1. This is a great reference for what foods go together.2. Helps in figuring out how to balance flavours.3. A source of inspiration for new recipes.4. The few recipes in this book are actually very good.I would not reccommend this as a beginer book. It will be most useful once you have a handle on some techniques and a variety of recipes. I really cannot say enough good things about this book.

Wonderful Reference Material

I am a self-taught home cook who enjoys the activities of the kitchen. I entered the cooking arena one of the standard ways, using cookbooks. Collections of recipes familarized me with the techniques and ethnic cooking styles. Gradually, my cookbook collection included reference books that provided some of the theory behind tastes and preparation styles. Gold's 1-2-3 series, Peterson's Sauces, and others introduced to me the philosophies that allow a cook to go beyond mimicking a recipe to improvising and even creating a dish. Culinary Artistry is perhaps the best available reference for learning about the traditions of combining flavors and food groups.It contains vital information that I suspect is taught only in some of the culinary schools. It provides valuable charts of information about cooking and menu planning. The book contains sections on Menus, including a seasonality chart and a chart explaining successful seasoning combinations. There is a section for Composing Flavors, the highlight of which is a chart showing successful food contrasts. Another section involves Composing A Dish. Here there is a chart showing great food matches and one showing seasoning matches. The Composing A Menu section offers a chart showing frequent accompaniments to meats and paragraphs presenting theories about Hors Douevres, Cheeses, and Desserts. This was a sparse and incomplete passage in an otherwise comprehensive book. Finally, there was a fun section addressing the Evolution of Chef's Styles. Here the authors provide sample menus comparing chef's offerings from earlier decades to their present day productions.The volume offers multiple anecdotes, quotes, and side bars concerning the views of popular chefs. Various recipes are interspersed to illustrate the principles. My one criticism was that the book was laid out like a college textbook. Photos, captions, quotes, highlighted lines, sidebars, and other areas compete on the same page, magazine style. The book serves as reference, frequently glanced at rather than read straight through as a narrative.

Inspiration and insight abound if nothing else.

Culinary Artistry is a book some may passover or leaf through in the bookstore for the likes of the Joy of Cooking or a Martha Stewart volume 20 cookbook. But look closer, the charts and the what-goes-well-with-what sections of this book alone are worth the price if only to give the food lover an inspired moment to create a dish with ingredients he or she may love. If you find yourself saying, "gee, I'd really love to have salmon tonight but I don't know what to put with it", pick up this book, find Salmon and refer to the extensive list of items that the interviewed chefs prefer with it and an idea is born. After that, all it takes is a little know-how in the kitchen and you've created your very own gourmet meal. If you choose to read from front to back you'll also discover page after page of insightful information from some of the nation's top chef's. Take your time, it's not a novel but it can be read like one and used as reference even after you've reached the last page. For the money, this is a book that will stay on your shelf for years to come and still manage to provide a new idea each time. So put down the Martha Stewart Haloween cookie issue and give Culinary Artistry a try, "It's a good thing". Sorry about that last one, she's infectious.