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Not a cookbook - there are no recipes. It's more like a reference textbook. Every single ingredient you can think of gets rigorously motif-indexed with complementary flavor pairings.
Build entire menus around that one item in the grocery store that catches your eye but you have no idea what to do with. Or find new exciting ways to use your favorite ingredients! I promise there is an entire universe inside this book
Jan 30, 2024
Related Recs
The Flavor Bible is a really fun one to have in your collection. It’s all about flavor/ingredient pairings. You look up an ingredient and they’ll list others that compliment it well.
There are no recipes.
Additionally, I was gifted The Complete Language of Food. This book is fun if you want to focus on symbolism with your cooking.
Feb 15, 2024
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One of my favorite books ever for cooking is The Flavor Bible! It's fascinating because it will share a word -- it can be a season, cooking style, or specific food product -- and it will list all the various flavors that go well with it. It can be super handy to have on hand to come up with recipes or understand what flavors go well together!
Also a Cooks Illustrated membership is totally worth it. It will teach you so much and the content is seriously endless. There are various free articles too if you want to get a taste. You can get a membership that also includes America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country which I very highly recc. Great equipment reviews too!
Have fun and enjoy the journey :-)
Apr 16, 2024
Not really a recipe book (though certainly has recipes) and more of a reference bible about the chemical processes of cooking. Kenji answers questions like:
- Why does the pH of my pancake batter matter?
- Why should I add sodium citrate to mac n cheese?
- Why is my turkey dry?
- How to make can beans taste good?
and will also teach you how to butterfly a chicken, faux-tourné your carrots, and emulsify your vinaigrettes.
Kenji is extraordinarily online (linked his website for socials) and posts tons of stuff for free if you don’t wanna shell out for this very expensive and very heavy book. I have a ton of respect for him and genuinely think he is the most influential living person working in food right now + will be remembered among the greats.
Can’t rec this book enough!
Feb 19, 2025
Top Recs from @younginvert
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more bites and each is more precious
Feb 12, 2025
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love it when two bitches straight up hate eachother and that's really all there is to it
Feb 9, 2025
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there are sososo many worse things than beauty to devote yourself to
Jan 29, 2024