The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs

First I have to say... don't buy reference books for your Kindle. Ever. There may be exceptions, but i would not look for them. Kindle simply is not a format that lends itself to research reading or reference; not saying it's impossible, but, generally, it doesn't work well. Now that you've been duly warned, please, don't buy and then rate book *content* because they translate poorly into Kindle *format* unless that is it's primary binding. It's not fair to other readers to drive down the rating on a text's usefulness or interest based on one format. Amazon, of course, should separate them out, or give shoppers the option. The first thing I EVER read about Kindle is, don't buy anything you would normally be "leafing" through, using an index, depending on diagrams or graphics etc. (not the case here) or where formatting is otherwise an issue (e.g. tables). Maybe some years down the road it will improve, and I don't use a Kindle Fire, but I stick to this advice and it serves me well. Now as far as The Flavor Bible goes: If you are anything but a recipe-guided cook--for instance, if you are staring into your cupboards or fridge and wondering what will work with what--and like me, you are too inexperienced or genetically underendowed with smell and taste to figure it out on your own - you WANT this book. you NEED this book. This book is the most useful and most used in my kitchen. IMO, aside from basic culinary skills - how to to cook certain cuts of meat, or how to use a steamer, or how to make sauce, or how many courses to serve ,or what order your menu should proceed through, or how to butcher meat - whatever - this is the only book you will ever need. If you don't have basic culinary skills, you can find everything you need to know on the internet. i went from how to cook different meats, to how to make sauces, and up from there, using sites like about dot com. I'm no chef - i'm a basic cook - but my food is GOOD. Since I don't have a well-developed palate, this book is a life-saver. and of course, once you start learning, you can start jumping around. Now i *know* - am i in the mood for a cream based dish? pineapple? potato? thyme? curry? chicken? pork? and what am i going to do with these leftovers? wow - i can plan a week and have EVERYTHING work together! The hardback version is well bound, easily referenced, and contains literally thousands of cross-references and often suggestions on how to combine dishes and seasonings as well, based on a main ingredient, in a way you will never find on the internet. And it's not just about seasoning--you can look up literally almost any seasoning OR basic ingredient and find a long list of compatible ingredients/flavors, in alphabetical order, with advice to let you know what goes the very best, what goes well, and what works but may not be ideal. AND an index. So you can look up a meat, or a vegetable, or a seasoning, or most any ingredient, and get a long list of what you can safely combine (within reason). and of course the hardback props open well. it's a quality bind on a quality text that you can keep forever.

If you love to cook, love to let your imagination come out to play in the kitchen and love experimenting with new foods, this is the book for you. If on the other hand you feel you must rigidly adhere to recipes, this book is still going to be great but not quite as indispensable. I enjoy cooking. Friends will tell you that I am a gourmet chef but the fact is that I really am not. I am a foodie who loves to experiment with flavors and also likes the challenge of replicating foods and flavors that I've had in a restaurant. My palate isn't all that sophisticated though. When it comes to cooking I will look online for ideas, I will look at recipes and perhaps start with something I see and then embellish and experiment as I go along. That's where the flavor bible comes in. If I'm in the kitchen the F Bible is never far from my side. I hosted a small plates party recently. I used a couple of mainstay dishes that I always cook but I wanted to branch out... baked egg rolls, hmmmm what vegetables and seasonings would work well together (I didn't want to go for the obvious soy and ginger) -- I ended up with garlic, cumin and soy as a base. It was delish. My challenge at this small plate feast was that there were people who couldn't handle any level of spice, a person deathly allergic to mushrooms, and a vegetarian. I needed to find substitutions and I did. It was fun figuring out work arounds for everyday flavors and ingredients There are obvious pairings (garlic and onion) and there are less obvious and more exotic pairings. These folks have so much knowledge. The book is a treasure trove. A great reference for when you want to go with new pairings or if you just have a question about something you'd like to try. You can't imagine the wealth of information packed into this very portable volume. Figs, hmmm what would go well with figs. Crack the book open to page 161 (its arranged alphabetically) and you will find a list of fig info including ways to use it and cook with it.... and then a list of its complementary foods and flavors In this case the fig pairs with; Almonds, anchovies, anise, apples, arugula, bacon, butter, a few cheeses, cherries, chicken, chococate........ All this and I'm only up to the letter C. It goes all the way through to walnuts. BOTTOM LINE.... Honestly, my review here can't begin to do this book justice. it is well worth double its list price. I've owned my copy almost ten years and I am not sure how I got along without it. You can go online and pretty much find any recipe you desire. But the information in this book just isn't available in any sort of comprehensive way online that I have found. This truly is a flavor bible written by religious food fanatics.... they have left very few stones unturned. Though I see now that they have a vegetarian flavor bible. I might have to check that out as well. If you like to be creative in the kitchen this book is a must. Buy it. Honest. You'll thank me.

The difference between a cook and a chef is that a cook knows how to follow a recipe, while a chef understands why. This book is not written for cooks. You will not find a single recipe within the pages of this tome. Instead, you will find hundreds of charts listing ingredients and flavors that pair well together, helping the chef to invent their own recipes. The book also discusses concepts such as taste (sweet, sour, bitter, salty), function (warming or cooling), volume (quiet, loud), and weight (heavy, light). This has become one of my most used references. Whenever I am presented with a new ingredient, I check the Flavor Bible first before consulting a cookbook. Brussels sprouts? What the heck do you do with Brussels sprouts? Just look it up in the Flavor Bible! The taste of Brussels sprouts is bitter, they have a moderate-heavy weight and are moderate-loud in volume. Recommended cooking techniques include boiling, braise, sauté, simmer, steam, stew and stir-fry. There are a couple dozen ingredients that will go well with it, but it goes especially well with bacon, butter, cheese or vinegar. The book also lists several flavor affinities, such as Brussels sprouts + bacon + onions. So I would try frying some chopped bacon to render it, maybe add a little butter or olive oil if I needed more fat, then sautéing halved Brussels sprouts and chopped onions. A little sea salt & fresh ground pepper, and voila!

I started learning to cook by following recipes that were either handed down to me or that I got out of a cookbook or magazine. When comparing this method to professional chefs who pull together wonderful, creative dishes with seemingly effortless ease it seems amateurish and simplistic, however it is a necessary phase. By following recipes I learned crucial techniques as well as what a well prepared meal should look and taste like. The next phase started when I tried to create my own recipes by first substituting one ingredient for another and later by going off the reservation completely by trying food combinations that I had never encountered in my recipes. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it led to disaster. Enter The Flavor Bible. A few reviewers have criticized this book for being a mere collection of lists of ingredients. Far from that, I see it as the Rosetta Stone for serious home cooks and professional chefs alike. As I have learned to use fresh, locally grown foods more I am often searching for a way to combine them. Trying to find a recipe that allows me to take advantage of a bumper crop of artichokes, sweet onions and garden grown thyme can be challenging. By using The Flavor Bible I look up artichokes and I can see what ingredients compliment it and I can put together a great tasting dish. However, this is only one element of the book. Beside listing ingredients and pairing them with other flavors the book also lists cuisines that make use of the ingredient in question. You may also look up a specific cuisine (Indian, Thai, Tex-Mex, Moroccan, etc.) and find commonly used ingredients, Flavor Affinities and often, a paragraph or two from a professional chef. Something else that I liked was that you could look up seasons (summer, winter, etc.) and find what foods are best served when it is hot or cold outside. The photographs (by Barry Salzman) are top notch and very inspirational. There are not very many of them but I don't think that there needs to be since this is not a cookbook you don't need to see what a particular dish is supposed to look like when completed. If you are still a little rusty on technique and are unsure about relative proportions you may not be ready for this book. If however you have graduated from only using the recipes of others and would like to explore unique and wonderful flavor combinations, I couldn't recommend this book any higher.

I first picked up a flavor Bible in a B&N bookstore many years ago. As someone who loves to tinker in the kitchen, its an extremely helpful tool when I'm putting together dishes or feel like my dish is "missing something". Not only has this book broadened the scope of ingredients I use, it's also informed the way I cooked and helped a largely self taught home cook about balance and composition. I bring up this book frequently in conversations about cooking and recently a friend asked to borrow it. So I did what any sensible person would do: I bought a loaner copy so I wouldn't have to part with mine for even a moment.

Book is great, love it. Not sure why is not in an envelope, plastic or SOMETHING to protect the book. It got damaged on the way.

I like to experiment with flavors and use this often for ideas. It's very easy to use. Want to know what spices go well with strawberries or squash? Just look it up alphabetically and see a list of flavors - savory and sweet, spices, herbs and other foods, that pair well. It's similar to The Flavor Thesaurus, but if I could only have one, I'd choose this one. For ease of use and more suggestions of flavors.

I recently added this book to my cookbook collection, which numbers more than 1,000 volumes (probably more like 1200 but I'm still cataloging). It has immediately become one of my favorites (and definitely my #1 favorite in English). If you are a serious cook, love to read cookbooks like novels, and view recipes as suggestions rather than as requiring strict adherence to precise measurements, then this is the book for you! (Did I say I LOVE this book?) I make all of the desserts for my husband's restaurant. If I snag some particularly luscious fruit and want to make it into a dessert, this is the book I reach for first. I don't WANT to be told how to make a fruit sorbet. I already know how. But I love having a list of suggested flavors and products that go with what I already have. It's like having an uber-creative friend at your side saying "hey, why not try THIS?" And if you are not an experienced cook, this book provides invaluable guidance that a recipe book never could. It is wholly different from every food book I have ever read. The book is clever, useful, and obviously the product of prodigious research. To the authors, I send my humble gratitude. You have made my life immeasurably easier, and my dishes far more interesting than ever before. This book is a must-read if you love to eat or love to cook. I have already bought six copies and have given two as gifts. It's THAT good.

It is about food, not recipies.

What a great , book to understand how flavor pairing works and fundamentals of cooking. I am a professional bartender and I find this book very useful for not just home use but for bar use as well.

Every time I have an ingredient I want to mix with something, I open this book. It's so simple to consult. I get ideas about what to make in five minutes and the food is just delicious. Five stars! This is probably not for beginners. Real beginners, like folks who struggle to cook rice of fry eggs. For the rest -- an absolute recommendation.

Tout est dans le titre. à ma connaissance c'est le seul livre au monde à traiter du sujet du goût et des saveurs. toute les combinaisons possibles et imaginables. des infos inédites et incroyables. c'est pointu et fouillé. avec ce livre vous allez oser des mélanges rares et subtils

It is very much an American book and it is noticable when you read it... however, as it is not a recipe book you do not face the usual problem of converting American measurements and temperatures into something a bit more UK friendly. I would encourage you to give this book a try even if an American bias is normally a bit annoying for you. This book offers combinations of more than 2 ingredients, explain how to create winning flavour combinations yourself and provide inspiration in the form of quotes from food writers or cooks. It reminds me of The Flavour Thesaurus, which is certainly a better known book where I am, but I find it to be far more educational and entertaining. It has definitely helped me become a more confident cook.