Reviews for Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making

The average rating for Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-08-29 00:00:00 Hellz Demonz Another book that will scare off the average cook. I have made bearnaise from this cookbook, following every detailed step he urges upon the cook, and heeding the warning that if the sauce is not made just so, it will turn into a heavy lumpy curdled nasty mess. I have also made bearnaise from The Joy of Cooking, which doesn't insist on exactitude and split second timing. Both sauces were just fine, excellent with my asparagus, but one of them nearly sent me to the hospital with a nervous breakdown, and the other actually built my confidence that, you know, cooking isn't that hard. Guess which was which? And with so many Americans turning increasingly to restaurant meals, prepared foods from the grocery store, and packaged frozen dinners, with the attendant damage to their wallets and waistlines, a cookbook that suggests that cooking requires an industrial degree of precision is not just annoying - it's downright dangerous. If you're a perfectionist, this is the book for you. If you are an ordinary cook, or heaven forbid, an amateur, this book will undermine your confidence in no time. If you are looking for a new and interesting sauce, get a copy of The Joy of Cooking or Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and look in the index under S.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-06-18 00:00:00 Audrone Paulauskiene Whoa, nelly. A formidable reference book for the professional, the ambitious amateur, and the historian. Read it for fun: dig the annotated recipes for dinners of ancient Rome or 18th-century France, sauces and all. As a beginning-to-intermediate home cook, this is hardly Very Necessary; Mark Bittman's quick sauces, scattered throughout How to Cook Everything, are just fine. But this book is a master of taste.