The Frugal Gourmet's Culinary Handbook: An Updated Version of an American Classic on Food and Cooking by Jeff Smith

The Frugal Gourmet's Culinary Handbook: An Updated Version of an American Classic on Food and Cooking Reviews

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  Aprilleigh

  This was more a curiosity than a useful addition to my library, and calling it "updated" is a bit of a misnomer. They reprinted the original book and added their own comments in a different color. For example, there are two entries for "aspic" - one in a reddish-brown (the original) and one in black (their version). Without the index it's nearly impossible to find anything that isn't a very basic term because there are an insane amount of variations, all of which have their own entry which break up the otherwise alphabetical dictionary-like approach. For example, I lost track of the number of difference entries for consomme. This might be a fun book to look through if you have a little time to kill, or it might be helpful if you're trying to revive an old recipe that uses terms and assumes knowledge you don't have, but otherwise this isn't much more useful than the very old, very dated book it pretends to have updated.
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  Modbon

  This isn't really a book of recipes (although it does have some), but more like a trip back in time to the early 1900s, the age of Delmonico's and 14-course dinners. It's also a great glossary of terms and ingredients, updated with new information from the 80s.
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  Tim

  Lots of good ideas and updates. This one is a keeper. From back in the day when the recipe is take item 1, item 2, item 3... make this... it is for professional chefs and presumes you know technique to accomplish said task... and reading it makes me hungry...
  
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  Joshua

  Premise was intriguing, but prefer actual recipes instead of Fellow's "receipts" and a few scattered explanations by Wollam.
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  Fredrick Danysh

  Recipes from Jeff Smith's cooking show containing reasonably priced ingredient and that are classical American in nature.