HB $45
Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook.
Winner! The Andre Simon Award for Food Books [UK]*
With our bookshelves groaning with the weight of all our lovely cookbooks, it’s hard to believe there could be any really original ideas out there – surely all food angles have been covered? But think again, for here is The Flavour Thesaurus! In this fascinating little book Niki Segnit has created a unique and useful resource for cooks who are interested in broadening their range of flavour combinations.
Set out like a regular thesaurus, the book is very easy to use. You simply look up the ingredient you wish to use in the back section. The back section lists popular ingredients and suggests classic and less well known flavour matches for each. The front section contains an entry for every flavour match listed in the back section and is organised into flavour themes. There are lots of entries, with many recipes and suggestions. It covers classic pairings such as pork & apple, lamb & apricot, and cucumber & dill and some other matches that are unusual or even odd but worth trying nevertheless.
Beautifully packaged, The Flavour Thesaurus is not only a highly useful reference book that will improve your cooking – it’s the sort of book that might keep you up at night, reading to find a list of possible combinations, along with mouth-watering recipes and ideas of how to put the pairing into practice.
* The prestigious André Simon Awards are made each year by the trustees of the André Simon Memorial Trust. They award a ‘Food Book of the Year’ and a “Wine Book of the Year”. Details can be found at http://www.andresimon.co.uk. The 2010 award was announced on the 5th April 2011.
André Louis Simon (1877 – 1970) was the charismatic leader of the English wine trade for almost all of the first half of the 20th century, and the grand old man of literate connoisseurship for a further 20 years. In 66 years of authorship, he wrote 104 books. For 33 years he was one of London’s leading champagne shippers; for another 33 years active president of the Wine & Food Society. Although he lived in England from the age of 25, he always remained a French citizen. He was both Officier de la Légion d’Honneur and holder of the Order of the British Empire.
