Product Description

A comprehensive survey of the plants that provide food, beverages, spices, and flavourings, this book will serve as an invaluable reference to gardeners, ethnobotanists, nutritionists, culinary professionals, dieticians, and food enthusiasts. This scientifically accurate guide will allow them to identify all the major plant-derived foods and flavours, research culinary uses, and understand their dietetic and nutritional properties. Introductory chapters cover the various categories of plant use, including cereals, pulses (legumes), nuts and seeds, fruits, vegetables, culinary herbs, sugar plants, beverages, spices, and flavourings. The core of the volume is an encyclopaedic description of more than 380 food and flavour plants in use worldwide, with over 800 colour photographs. This accessible, pictorial guide is a concise source of practical information, not readily available elsewhere, and should be on every food enthusiast's bookshelf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #396182 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

About the Author
Ben-Erik van Wyk is a professor of botany at the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Customer Reviews

Food and Spice for Thought
... belongs on your kitchen shelf, next to salt and pepper, or right smack on the kitchen table ... you are, what you eat.... so, will learn more about yourself! Hmm!? This is a fantastic book, appatizing, mouth-watering, a must for the 'kitcheneer'... you'll love the crisp, authentic photography! ...and your meals will taste so much better with that extra grain of salt and the provided pepper, I mean, spice for thought! A nice and affordable present - always comes in handy. I keep an EXTRA copy, just in case a friend decides not to let loose of mine. Enjoy!

TCH Cole - hobby cook and botanist -
Heidelberg, Germany

Surprisingly good
I rarely, if ever, write reviews on the many books I purchase via Amazon. After receiving this one, however, I felt I should make an exception. I admit I was not expecting too much, after all how could a book of less than 500 pages even begin to cover most or even many of the numerous food plants in use in the world? Boy, was I wrong. The amount of information packed on every page is quite remarkable, both visually, with usually multiple pictures per species, and in succint yet surprisingly comprehensive texts. Descriptions, origins and history, uses, cultivation, properties, and nutritional information are among the topics covered on every page. I am particularly grateful for the inclusion for every plant of their name(s) in several major languages (including Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, etc.), which, while unavoidably not complete given the often numerous regional variants within each language, is something many similar books do not even attempt to do. Obviously not every food plant in use or cultivation can be covered exhaustively in any single volume, but even the more obscure ones I encountered while traveling in Latin America are at least mentioned somewhere in descriptions of better-known related species. The many Timber Press books I own are good, but this is likely the best. I used to have to waste my time on repeated google searches when looking for basic information on tropical fruits or unusual food plants I knew nothing about; now I just open van Wyk's book.