The Flavor Bible is a unique food guide, as it doesn't contain any recipes. The Flavor Bible lists individual ingredients, and the other ingredients that work in harmony with, or against each ingredient. For example, the listing for tarragon gives the following tips:
- Season: late spring-summer
- Taste: sweet
- Weight: light
- Volume: loud
- Tips: add at the end of the cooking process
Flavor Affinities
- tarragon + anise + celery seeds
- tarragon + chicken + lemon
- tarragon + orange + seafood
The authors of The Flavor Bible want to encourage the amateur and professional chef, along with home cooks, to experiment with various flavor combinations in order to come up with their own unique culinary creations. The author's mention in The Flavor Bible preface that "Over the years, cookbooks have come to dictate precise measurement of ingredients... When a recipe is rigidly scripted and blindly followed, it negates the cook's own creative instincts and good judgment, not to mention much of the pleasure of truly being in the moment."
Herb and Spice Flavor Combinations
The author's contacted over 35 experts, including chefs, journalists and restaurant owners, who contributed their opinions on various flavor combinations to The Flavor Bible. For example, besides individual listings for various herbs and spices, The Flavor Bible includes interviews from Jerry Traunfeld of The Herbfarm, Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Vitaly Paley of Paley's Place.
The Flavor Bible is divided into three main sections:
- Flavor; learning to recognize the language of food
- Great Cooking; communicating via the language of food
- The Charts; flavor matchmaking
The Flavor Bible also features over 70 full color photographs, of various ingredients, taken by professional photographer Barry Salzman.
About the Authors
Married since 1990, authors Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg are journalists, and award winning authors of a myriad of books including The Flavor Bible (Little, Brown and Company, 2008), What to Drink with What You Eat (Bulfinch Press, 2006), Becoming a Chef , Dining Out and The New American Chef . For additional information on the author's and their publications, visit their Becoming A Chef website.
Karen Page is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Harvard Business School. Andrew Dornenburg studied with the legendary Madeleine Kamman at the School for American Chefs, and has cooked professionally in top restaurants in New York City and Boston. The couple resides in New York City.
About the Book
- Authors: Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
- Title: The Flavor Bible
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
- Date Published: 2008
- ISBN: 978-0-316-11840-8
Further Information
For specific recipes, which feature herbs and spices, see the article 101 Recipes from the Herb Lady. A review of the book Herbs; A Cooks Guide to Flavorful and Aromatic Ingredients, can be read in the article Culinary Herb Book Review. The article, Field Guide to Herbs & Spices by Aliza Green, is an encyclopedic resource on how to identify, select and use every seasoning at the market.
Lynn Smythe - ABOUT THE WRITER Born and raised in Rochester, New York, freelance writer Lynn Smythe obtained her bachelor's degree in Geology from ...
