Product Description

Twenty years in the making, the first edition of Alan Davidson's magnum opus appeared in 1999 to worldwide acclaim. Its combination of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity was recognized as utterly unique. Including both an exhaustive catalogue of the foods that nourish humankind-fruit from tropical forests, mosses scraped from adamantine granite in Siberian wastes, or ears, eyeballs and testicles from a menagerie of animals-and a richly allusive commentary on the culture of food, whether expressed in literature and cookbooks, or as dishes peculiar to a country or community, the Oxford Companion to Food immediately found distinction.

The study of food and food history was a new discipline at the time, but one that has developed exponentially in the years since. There are now university departments, international societies, and academic journals, in addition to a wide range of popular literature exploring the meaning of food in the daily lives of people around the world.

Alan Davidson famously wrote eighty percent of the first edition, which was praised for its wit as well as its wisdom. Tom Jaine, the editor of the second edition, worked closely with Jane Davidson and Helen Saberi to ensure that new contributions continue in the same style. The result is an expanded volume that remains faithful to Davidson's peerless work. The text has been updated where necessary to keep pace with a rapidly changing subject, and Jaine assiduously alerts readers to new avenues in food studies. Agriculture; archaeology; food in art, film, literature, and music; globalization; neuroanatomy; and the Silk Road are covered for the first time, and absorbing new articles on confetti; cutlery; doggy bags; elephant; myrrh; and potluck have also found their way into the Companion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252859 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 907 pages

Amazon.com Review
Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food has been over 20 years in the assembling, but here it is; and it is superlatively worth the wait. In fact, superlatives fall silent. A huge and authoritative dictionary of 2,650 entries on just about every conceivable foodstuff, seasoning, cuisine, cooking method, historical survey, significant personage, and explication of myth, it is supplemented by some 40 longer articles on key items. Davidson himself (no relation to this reviewer) contributes approximately 80 percent of the 2,650 entries, thereby guaranteeing high levels of erudition, readability, and deadpan feline wit. Since this is a monument intended to last, nothing so frivolous as a recipe is included. A decision taken early in the development of the project to abjure issues whose significance is largely topical has also ensured an agreeable high-mindedness--nothing on those crucial but essentially dreary topics of BSE and GM foods, for example.

If a fault could be found, it would only be that it's often difficult to read to the end of an entry, as the abundant cross-referencing all too easily sends one off to another entry, thence bouncing off to another, and all too soon the original is forgotten. A random alphabet of seductions might include: Aardvark, Botulism, Cup Cake, David (Elizabeth), Enzymes, Fat-Tailed Sheep, Gender/Sex and Food, Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, Ice Cream Sundae, Jewish Dietary Laws, Kangaroos, Lobscouse, Microwave Cooking, Norway, Offal, Puffin, Queen of Puddings, Roti, Scurvy, Termite Heap Mushroom (or Taillevant), Umeboshi, Vegetarianism, Washing up (a very elegant little article), sadly no X, Yin-yang, and Zabaglione. As this might show, Alan Davidson's aim, borrowed from Dumas's great Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, that his work would appeal not only to persons of "serious character" but also those "of a much lighter disposition," is utterly fulfilled. --Robin Davidson, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal
This outstanding culinary reference is destined to become a classic, and Davidson, the book's editor and the author of many of its entries, deserves the eternal gratitude of researchers everywhere. With its 2650 alphabetically arranged entries as well as 39 longer articles on staples such as rice, the range of the work is impressive. Everything from individual ingredients, cooking terms, and prepared dishes to national cuisines and cookbooks and their authors is covered. Each entry is written in a clear, engaging style often seasoned with a dash of wit. The result is a perfect complement to another standard culinary reference work, Larousse Gastronomique (Crown, 1988. reprint), edited by Jennifer H. Lang. While there is some overlap, libraries will need both titles in their reference collections since each has its own strengths. Larousse includes recipes with many of its entries and often provides cooking hints, while Oxford provides more extensive treatment of plants, herbs, and even insects used in cooking and usually has more information on national cuisines. Even when the same topic is featured, such as ancient Greek cooking, there is enough difference in information between these two sources that readers will want to consult both. Highly recommended.AJohn Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"The Oxford Companion to Food" is astounding in breadth and thoroughness, including 2,650 A-Z (dictionary-like) entries, detailing international food products and their preparation. London food historian Davidson persevered twenty years to complete this tome with the help of fifty regional specialists. His skill is best measured both by the usefulness and intrigue of his descriptions....amateurs and professionals alike will relish this work. -- Seth McEvoy, Foreword Magazine, November 1999

...outstanding culinary reference... destined to become a classic, and Davidson, the book's editor, deserves the eternal gratitude of researchers everywhere. -- John Charles, Library Journal, October 15, 1999

In scope and ambition, this guide to the history and use of food is a work of scholarship comparable to the original edition of the "Dictionary of National Biography"....Some day the field of food history or culinary history or gastronomy or foodways, or whatever it may be called, will achieve full academic status and respectability. This will be largely thanks to Mr. Davidson's labors and "The Oxford Companion to Food." And thanks to him, too, it need never be a dull subject. -- Paul Levy, Wall Street Journal, November 12, 1999

The Oxford Companion to Food has been twenty years in the making, but the wait was worth it....This is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. Just thumbing through it and reading at random can provide hours of delicious entertainment....This is a fantastic book, loaded with knowledge that is essential to any person serious about food. -- Anthony Dias Blue, WCBS Newsradio 88, December 22, 1999

The book, an outgrowth, of the annual Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery, lives up to the highest expectations. It is a masterly work with a variety of voices, from the straightforward, almost dry, to the quirky and witty....It's not hard to be awed by the 892 pages dense with extremely thorough and well-written entries, enhanced by cross-references and indexes and larded with anecdotes and strong opinions. -- Florence Fabricant, New York Times, November 29, 1999

The more than 2,000 entries in the 892-page tour de force will enlighten you as to the history, cultivation, and flavor of every edible you've ever heard of and hundreds that you never even knew existed. If you want to learn how to roast termites like a Banana Island native (in an iron pot over a gentle fire) or where to sample monkey brains (Southeast Asia), this book is for you. -- Men's Journal, December 1999/January 2000

This is one that's destined to find its way onto the bookshelf of everyone who's serious about food and wine. Might as well buy it now; you'll have to sooner or later. There are very few books that deserve to be called instant classics, but this is one of them. Full of information both utterly practical and delightfully obscure, it is written with an uncompromising eye for accuracy and a rich sense of detail. -- The Los Angeles Times, December 15, 1999

Customer Reviews

Majestic work incorporating a lifetime of research
Simply the best new book about food in years. An extraordinary compendium of knowledge, brilliantly put together and superbly written. Amazing amount of research went into a book that looks at food around the world. A great companion to Larousse and other great books on food. Fascinating to browse through.

The Pengiun On My Cookshelf
The Pengiun Companion (in its hardcover original the Oxford Companion to Food) runs more than a thousand pages and contains more than 2500 entries on every plant and animal product, every cooking tradition and technique, of any relevance to the well-schooled cook. It is universal in its scope, yet at the same time, how can I put this, British. A team of eminent culinary scholars put this one together. Now I know you're wondering, before anything else, if the flightless bird of the Antarctic itself is edible. The answer is, with some reservations, yes. The book's 500-word entry on its namesake ingredient shows at once the usual detail and characteristic humor of the Companion's approach. We are told that we are often reminded of the penguin by the paperback edition of a book or by "observing at social functions those few Englishmen who still dress up to look like waiters or penguins-it is never clear which." The problem with the technically edible penguin is that it eats only fish and hence tastes strongly like its diet. The penguin is most important in the food chain for the guano it leaves as waste, an excellent fertilizer. South Africans eat the eggs of some species of penguins.

British foods-"Yorkshire Pudding," "Cheshire Cheese," Scottish Haggis," and scores of others less known to us-get thorough treatments of course, but so do foods from all over the globe. One need only look at the companions to the "Penguin" entry in the Penguin Companion to learn something new about two quintessentially American food traditions. Move one up alphabetically from "Penguin" and you learn the essence of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking: the "interplay of sweet flavors against salty ones," sweet apples, for instance, combined with salty ham. The entry covers the usual explanation that the Pennsylvania Dutch aren't really Dutch at all; "Dutch" was originally a term used in America to refer to people who spoke German, a corruption, perhaps, of "Deutsch." Move one entry down from "Penguin" and you get a thorough entry on "Pemmican," the product of hardened preserved meat associated with native North Americans. The word, it seems, is derived from the Cree pimiy, meaning "grease." I've always known that small berries were added to a dried meat and fat mixture to make pemmican, but the Companion postulates a reason: the berries contain benzoic acid, a natural preservative, which inhibits bacterial growth. Skip up slightly and you get a full page on the important spice "Pepper." Move back a few and you get the full story on "Peking Duck." It's all here in exhaustive detail.

Not everyone is as insane as I was to read every entry, every page, but this masterpiece is truly a good companion. I'm still looking for another book to occupy me so thoroughly, for so long.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

The only food book you will ever need.
This heroic effort to describe every aspect of food is replete with concise information, smart essays on many topics, and a sharp sense of humor. You will not be able to put it down.