Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(20 customer reviews) 45 of 46 people found the following review helpful
A shrunken reprint,
November 20, 2007 musiclover (Hayward, CA United States) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
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...Read more
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant, if bulky,
February 27, 2006 Christopher F. Orman - See all my reviews
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...Read more
76 of 92 people found the following review helpful
High Priced Baloney,
March 11, 2005 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...Read more
