Product Description

"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."a 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 the creative process of culinary composition as it explores the intersection of food, imagination, and taste. Through interviews with more than 30 of America′s leading chefsa including Rick Bayless, Daniel Boulud, Gray Kunz, Jean–Louis Palladin, Jeremiah Tower, and Alice Watersa the authors reveal what defines "culinary artists," how and where they find their inspiration, and how they translate that vision to the plate. Through recipes and reminiscences, chefs discuss how they select and pair ingredients, and how flavors are combined into dishes, dishes into menus, and menus into bodies of work that eventually comprise their cuisines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2633702 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 426 pages

Review
"The husband–and–wife writing team of Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page––he is a chef, she a journalist––has produced four books in the past six years, and these are the best place to experience the cult of the New American chef." (The New Yorker, September 2001)

“…it’s been a valuable source of inspiration…lots of great recipes…” (Delicious Food Magazine, July 2007)

Review
"The husband–and–wife writing team of Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page––he is a chef, she a journalist––has produced four books in the past six years, and these are the best place to experience the cult of the New American chef." (The New Yorker, September 2001)

“…it’s been a valuable source of inspiration…lots of great recipes…” (Delicious Food Magazine, July 2007)

Time Out, December 1996
"One of the best culinary books of the year....A valuable reference for both amateurs and professionals."

Customer Reviews

This reference is the "Color Wheel" of food.
Painters have the color wheel to identify what colors match others. Now chefs, and lovers of food everywhere, have one too.

"Culinary Artistry" is not a "cookbook." Rather, it is a culinary chemistry textbook. Hundreds of pages are dedicated to the "Food matches made in heaven." That is to say, what food goes with what food/herb/spice.

Anyone who loves cooking will love it even more with the wealth of knowledge that this book imparts to the reader. It will take every aspiring chef, or home cook to a higher level.

No matter how many "cookbooks" you have, "Culinary Artistry" is an invaluable reference in your cooking library!

Go for their newer work instead
I bought the authors' newer work, The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs, which describes itself as covering "modern" flavour combinations, whereas this earlier work covers "classic" flavour combinations. It also says in that other book that it ought to be used in conjunction with this earlier work (and also with their work on food and drink matching, What to Drink with What You Eat: The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water).

So, I duly went ahead and got this book too. However, I honestly cannot see anything in this earlier book which warrants getting it if you have the later work, as the later work appears to be a superset of the earlier with no obvious disjointedness. (And I'm mildly annoyed that some of the issues plaguing the later work exist here and are in fact identical - i.e. where flavour A references flavour B, then flavour B does not necessarily reference flavour A in return; this hasn't been addressed in the 12 years intervening publication of the two books.) Just go for the newer book alone.

Not defective, it's a 'rough-cut' book
This is a "rough-cut" edition of this title.

Many publishers today produce titles with these rough-cut edges to
mimic an older style of publishing.

At the beginning of the 20th century many publishers produced books with pages that needed to be slit open with a knife before reading.

All books produced in this fashion would have pages marked by rough edges as a result of this.

In an effort to reproduce this style, contemporary printers will produce
books with "rough-cut" pages like those found in this title.