Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany by Ben Schott

Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany Reviews

• 
  Sophie Crane

  An excellent book full of facts that you never wanted to know, once you start to read this you will not out it down.
• 
  Shannon

  The second book of Miscellany (after Schott's Original Miscellany), this one focuses on food and drink (obviously), throughout the ages and across the world. Includes everything from cocktail mixes to gout, the history of popcorn and breakfast quotations. Hilarious, informative and fascinating.
• 
  Ralph

  Slim volume on all sorts of food esoterica. Was especially intrigued reading about the "Bristol Stool Form Chart."
  
  For hard core foodies only.
• 
  Susan

  If you like cooking and have a sense of curiosity, this is the book for you. On the first page, we find short write-ups on equine savouries, saffron, formal meal times, and smoke-rings. On the second, there’s popcorn, gourmands and indigestion, and Melba toast. And here are also drinking cheers from Afrikaans to Welsh, “brimmers, bumpers, buzzes, back-handers, & bishops”, tea grading nomenclature, films featuring cannibalism, breakfast quotations, diagrams for measuring spaghetti servings, a list of things Homer Simpson has drooled “Mmm...”over and many other curious, useful, and diverting facts. Delightfully entertaining.
• 
  Harvey

  - wildly eclectic collection of miscellaneous cooking information/history: how to cook a swan (and why it's illegal), how Hemingway liked his Martinis, why asparagus makes your urine smell funny, how to read tea leaves and blow smoke rings, how to raise a toast in Romanian, napkin folding techniques, pasta shapes, death row convicts' last meal menus
  - the five tastes: Salt, Sour, Bitter, Sweet, and Umami (globally recognized in only the last ten years or so, as the 'savoury' or 'meaty' taste sensations - stimulated by condiments like soy sauce or foods with glutamate - like M.S.G.
  - quite entertaining
• 
  Gregor

  perfect bogside reading matter, full of interesting facts.
• 
  H James

  I’m admiring of Mr Schott’s page design and his conception of a book that can be consumed one randomly selected page at a time, but the amount of typographical hiccups is maddening, the amount of obvious misinformation dismaying. I appreciate that he was working in 2003 (i.e., with somewhat less capable layout software and without the font of knowledge that is Wikipedia), but searching for and automatically removing accidental double spaces was as doable then as it is now, and anyone with even moderate cooking knowledge should have questioned the veracity of a table in which the given smokepoint of sunflower oil is lower than that of olive oil, so my sympathy is limited.
• 
  Ron

  A droll compendium of whatever Ben Schott felt was interesting or amusing about food and drink. I question the need to know the Thai words for food measurements, or the entire dopey jingle of Burns's haggis poem, but it is easy to skip over entries that are too twee.
  Read as bedtime reading, for which it was excellent. Short entries, some amusing and others worth knowing, sort of.
  I will remember to keep it on hand to look up stuff that might come up in conversations.
• 
  Elisala

  Un recueil assez incroyable de petites informations autour de la gastronomie, souvent drôles, souvent parfaitement inutiles, mais tout autant indispensables.
  Je n'ai même pas encore lu les miscellanées non culinaires du même Mr Schott, mais ce deuxième opus me donne envie de m'y attaquer, car ça se lit avec délice et un petit sourire aux coins des lèvres.
• 
  Roger

  This was a fun collection of trivia, with lots of historical anecdotes. I agree with one of the other reviewers that it is perfect for "bathroom" reading. Great to digest a page at a time.
• 
  Justine

  Just like the "first" book, this one is so great!! The reader learns so many things!
  Warning: I felt disgust reading some articles like on horse meat or things like that.
• 
  Nicholas Ball

  Ben Schott does it again. Bizarre, fascinating, eclectic - everything a miscellany should be. Amish seating conventions, Mr Burns' breakfast, the fate of the poor orlotan, it's all here..
• 
  Tanner

  Eh
• 
  Francis Ridgeon

  Interesting tidbits. Some history and opinions
• 
  Kara

  
  A fun little book stuffed full of all sorts of random food and drink based facts and figures.
• 
  Victoria

  Perfect amount of random knowledge on food.
• 
  kirk

  This book explicitly claims not to be practical (In case you didn't get that implication from the title.)
  
  It's a charming little gift book. I got mine from my friend Elyse, who happens to be particularly good at picking out gift books. But why would one want a book filled with random facts about and quotes regarding food and its history?
  
  Because then you can know about Russian doll roasts (think turducken). You could begin preparing one of these dishes by stuffing a clove and a caper into an olive, then stuffing that into a bec-figue, then that into an ortolan . . . and so forth, until you've got fifteen or twenty birds stuffed into a turkey, and then finally, into an enormous bustard.
  
  Or: you could be at a baby shower, and mention the idea of these elaborate Russian doll concoctions, and discover that someone else there is familiar with a particular ritual involved in eating ortolan, those tiny little birds, bones and all. That might call to mind for someone else in the conversation Loren Groff's book "Delicate Edible Birds," and, in the end, you will have had a very interesting conversation. Assuming, of course, that the others at the baby shower have an interest in interesting miscellany.
  
  
• 
  Karschtl

  This is a book where you read only bits and pieces at a time, which makes it the perfect book for the bathroom.
  I skipped some entries, but overall it was quite interesting. I'm just not sure how much of it I will remember.
  I was really impressed by one recipe, where you put more than 10 different birds (dead but uncooked) into one another (from very small to larger than a turkey) like little russian babushkas and then put it into the oven for a very very long time. I'm also wondering who really wants to eat this.
• 
  Camille

  Si vous avez déjà lu Les Miscellanées de Ben Schott, vous savez à quoi vous attendre ! Certains articles, qui se trouvaient déjà dans le premier volume, ont été enrichis pour que le lecteur n'ait pas le sentiment de relire la même chose. De la couleur des smarties au menu du banquet servi à l'issue de la première cérémonie de remise des prix Nobel, ce recueil regorge d'informations sur la gastronomie du monde entier.
• 
  Amy

  Oh what a glorious book! Now I shall finally find out the 10 characteristics a perfect cheese must have (crass American that I am, I was just going by taste), what was eaten on JFK's 45th birthday (May 19, 1962- 42 years ago, next week), and why asparagus leaves that distinctive odor when we- umm...use the loo.
  
  Sent to me by Netstation.
• 
  Kiran

  Great little book filled with drips and drabs of miscellaneous food related trivia. I enjoyed being able to read this in bits and pieces over the course of six months. A fun collection of both historical and current food related odds and ends.
• 
  Jenne

  Trivia...about food! It's like he wrote it just for me.
• 
  Houari Sabirin

  quite so damn pretty good book to know the other side of what we are facing of everyday... ^^
• 
  Cannonhistory Potter

  Just one of those books that you can pick up and put down anytime and still get something out of it...even if it's just some silly anecdote
  
• 
  Stephanie

  Random facts about food, wine, eating and drinking. I love a list, and there are plenty of those in here. I learned some stuff and laughed a lot. Right up my alley.