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New York Times Book Review, Sunday, May 28, 2006
Reviews by AMANDA HESSER
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
Lives of the Cooks
If taste is ephemeral, so is the memory of those who have influenced that taste. "In putting this book together," writes Alice Arndt, the editor of CULINARY BIOGRAPHIES (YES PRESS, $48) "we were surprised to note how many of our biographees were renowned in their own time, yet had later been almost completely forgotten. The names of the most famous cooks of their day, the most influential writers and thinkers, the most fashionable restaurateurs, often bring blank looks when mentioned today." Among these are Eliza Acton, the 19th-century English cookbook writer who came up with the idea of ingredient lists in recipes; Nicolas-François Appert, who figured out how to preserve food in glass bottles and tin cans, spawning an entire industry; and Count Rumford, a British military officer of the late 18th century, who invented an early form of the convection oven.
With entries written by nearly a hundred contributors, the book is a pleasure to read: it makes you grateful that so many were possessed by their hunger to further our understanding and enjoyment of food. To her credit, Arndt took great pains to make the book as international as possible, including figures like Yuan Mei, a Chinese poet and epicure, and K. T. Achaya, an Indian food historian. And she opens the door for readers to suggest more culinary biographies in future editions.
One of the book's most helpful aspects is its system for cross-referencing. In the entry for Poppy Cannon, author of "The Can-Opener Cookbook," contemporaries like James Beard, M. F. K. Fisher and Alice B. Toklas are mentioned in bold print — so you can skip from biography to biography, building your own map of people and shifts in the culinary world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/books/review/28hesser_foodchronicle.ht ml?8bu&emc=bu
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