International Dictionary of Food and Cooking

by C.G. Sinclair and (Compi Sinclair

Book Overview

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579580572
• ISBN13: 9781579580575
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 600 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A top Culinary Dictionary

This dictionary is more useful to me than Food Lover's Companion perhaps 6,000 entries in specific areas-when I am researching international foods, techniques and products. The IDFC's advantage is it's huge breadth of coverage, with a terse description of over 24,000 items. With it's breadth of coverage, it does not have the depth of Food Lover's Companion in some topics, and it curiously lacks the FLC's pronuciation, a glaring defect in any dictionary. When the IDFC is compared to Alan Davidson's erudite Penguin Companion to Food (or the hardcover version, the Oxford Companion to Food), which has WAY fewer topics, the IDFC does not present the concentrated depth as well. Davidson has about a page on "Celtic Feasting", and half a page on "Haggis", wheras IDFC has different Celtic dishes, and a terse paragraph on "haggis". Really, the same goes for reference books on any subject; one needs to have several texts to savor, and sort through to find the information you need in both depth and breadth. Certainly, as a dictionary the IDFC dwarfs the PCF by having over 22,000 thousand entries more than PCF, simply because the PCF is not a dictionary. What to choose? I chose to have all of the above texts on my shelf. You additionally may select these and other reference texts in the specific areas in which you have a particular focus, be it French cookery, Medieval cookery, Caribbean cooking, etc. Because of the varied approaches and unique strengths of each reference book, I find them very complementary to each other, and, combined on one's bookshelf as a reference system, they, together, are certainly superior in accuracy, depth and breadth, to any "Googling" of a particular food item, term or technique.

This is THE dictionary

The BEST culinary dictionary out. Considerably better than everything else out, even better than the Food Lover's Companion.