The Gourmet Cookbook: More than 1000 recipes Review

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The Gourmet Cookbook: More than 1000 recipes Review`The Gourmet Cookbook' edited by Ruth Reichl of `Gourmet' magazine is a major effort by the leading culinary magazine in the country, edited by arguably the most important active culinary journalist in the country. At over 1000 pages and 1000 recipes collected by one of the best culinary writing staffs in the country, it is not easy to come to a decision on the value of this book. The fact that it is not easy after reading a few pages is a sure sign that the book is neither excellent nor terrible, but somewhere in between.
For starters, let me identify that this book is not a new `Joy of Cooking' or `James Beard's American Cookery' or Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything'. These three very large recipe collections are systematic teaching texts. Every chapter includes notes on the primary raw material and the primary cooking method. `The Gourmet Cookbook' is primarily a collection of recipes claimed to be the 1000 best, selected from 60 years of publishing over 10,000 recipes. The most famous similar cookbook is Craig Claiborne's `The New York Times Cookbook'. Reichl has improved a bit on Claiborne by adding some features appearing in the `Joy of Cooking' style of book such as sidebars on ingredients, tips, and techniques. I will approach evaluating this very big book by evaluating individual aspects and adding up the score at the end.
Selection of Topics: Comprehensive, but just a bit oddly organized. The chapter titles represent either a type of ingredient such as poultry, vegetables, and shellfish; a type of dish such as soup, salad, bread, and pie; or meal such as breakfast and brunch and first courses. I had a hard time finding the sticky bun recipe Reichl touted on the `Today' show because it was in `Breakfast and Brunch' and not in `Breads'. Chapters on Eggs, Charcuterie, and Smoked Foods would have been better than `Breakfast...'.
Selection of Recipes: Overall, the selection is good, although the quality of the selection is uneven from one chapter to the next. In the chapter on salads, there is a recipe for almost every famous named salad you can think of, with a few minor omissions. The Waldorf salad and the chef's salad are missing, even though the latter is mentioned in the chapter introduction. The chapter on breads is much poorer, as it is less than half the size of the salads chapter, yet dozens more big books are written about bread than about salads.
Variety of Recipes: Very good. European, Mediterranean, Asian, Latin American, African, and North American cuisines are all well represented. A slight tilt toward French and Italian specialities is entirely understandable and appropriate. No sense in straying from your strengths.
Quality of Recipes: Good, but not Great. This is the big kahuna category. If we are given 1000 excellent recipes in a single volume, all other considerations pale into insignificance. I confess I have not read all 1000 recipes, but I have read enough of the standards to see that most of the culinary gods have been appeased, but not all. The brioche dough recipe correctly requires an overnight rise in the fridge. On the other hand, the recipes for omelets leave out several important steps which superchef Jacques Pepin would include AND which super tutor Alton Brown would second. The book is wise enough to include a recipe for the Philippine dish chicken adobo, yet it does not give us the recipe the way the Filipinos prepare it. The recipe also violates a principle given in another part of the book to use whole chickens and calls for making the dish with chicken legs. My Philippines cookbook and all my Filipino friends use the whole chicken. Reichl and her writers make much of their selecting the best of a very large number of recipes for certain dishes which have appeared in the magazine over the years, but this means they are giving us not the very best recipe, but the best recipe which has appeared in the magazine, brought up to date where necessary. I checked out the sticky bun recipe and found it good, but not quite as good as the classic presented in the `Baking With Julia Child' volume which does several more layerings of butter in the rolled dough and which uses the more traditional single pan baking approach rather than Gourmet's muffin pan technique.
Quality of Supplementary Material: Generally very good. Its primary weakness is that sidebar subjects are determined entirely by the whim of the editors rather than by the demands of the subject. Eggs get an excellent essay on quality and size, but there is no special discussion of omelets or souffle making. There is no sidebar on braising technique, the single most important technique in the French canon. The Glossary is just large enough to be respectable, but no replacement for the Larousse Gastronomique. The list of suppliers is large, but just a little quirky. It covers all the Food Network favorites such as Murray's Cheese Shop and Penzey's Spices and a lot more, but it oddly lists some sources with nothing more than a phone number and web site, with no clue to the kind of provisions they supply.
Basics: Solid recipes for stocks and condiments labeled as the most important chapter in the book. You will not go wrong with these recipes. The five-spice recipe, for example, is better than the one I just used from a book on spices.
Most reviewers comment on the yellow recipe titles that are difficult to read. I agree this was a mistake, but my 60-year-old astigmatic eyes can still make them out. I sincerely hope that the second edition corrects this goof.
This is a good collection of recipes from 60 years of a good culinary magazine done by a great editor. It is better than the New York Times collection, but no replacement for `The Joy of Cooking'. At $40, it is a real bargain.
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