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Ultimate Food & Drink 2006
Oct. 18, 2006, 2:31AM
FOOD BOOK THAT NOURISHES OUR INTELLECT AND CURIOSITY
Culinary Biographies
From the very first entry in Houstonian Alice Arndt's fascinating Culinary Biographies you know you're in for something unusual. The subject is Friedrich Christian Accum, a late-18th-century chemist who was the first to detect adulterants in food. The cover of his controversial Treatise on Adulterations of Food (1820) showed "snakes writhing around a fly trapped by a large spider (and) topped by a banner with a skull and crossbones and the words 'There is death in the pot.'" The remaining 189 biographies of the World's Great Historic Chefs, Cookbook Authors and Collectors, Farmers, Gourmets, Home Economists, Nutritionists, Restaurateurs, Philosophers, Physicians, Scientists, Writers and Others Who Influenced the Way We Eat Today, per the subtitle, are equally compelling. Arndt spent five years on the book. Her subjects encompass the famous (Julia Child) and the forgotten (Peter Kump), and the real and the imaginary (Betty Crocker). It's a thrilling and instructive read.
Yes Press, $48; www.culinarybiographies.com
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