Oxford Companion to Food Book

The editorial review above has the whole concept covered quite accurately. this is the encyclopedia of food: individual ingredients, techniques on cooking them, what different cultures have done with them. i've spent the past couple of evenings with this one on my kitchen table, looking up what i was making for dinner that night, and being both intrigued by the depth of knowledge one could have on pita (for example) and amused at the way that knowledge is presented. i don't know that anyone would be able to just sit down and read straight through this one. much like any other encyclopedia, you'd pull it off the shelf to look something specific up. unlike the traditional encyclopedia, you'd stay to wander off somewhere else, like a foodie hardcopy version of the wikipedia.