Anne from North Carolina
Timeless! A brilliantly crafted book. This is truly a must for any ones kitchen.

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Larousse Gastronomique Recipe Collection
Recipes are great, the setout is logical and easy to index. Very disappointed in the presentation. The books are advertised as hardcover but that is just the surround, the books themselves are low quality paperbacks.

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very nice
Very resourceful and extensive information. I was surprised at the size of the book(larger that I anticipated).

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Great for both profesionals and home cooks
This IS the reference "Bible, Koran, etc" for chefs worldwide and is a must for those whom either like to cook or love collecting cookbooks.

For those who cant seem to master or understand the following, "There are no cross references to where the recipe for a flan case appears (which it doesn't as far as I could find) and the instructions to saute in "hot butter" are useless." I have but 2 answers for you;


1. Have you ever heard of a pate brisee?

2. If you do not understand what hot butter is, then please do us all a favor and stay out of the kitchen.

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Incredible Breadth and Depth, Great Recipes
I have many times over many years gone to the Larousse Gastronomique as my first step in menu planning before a grand meal. Its encycopedic breadth, its to-the-point informative essays, its side-by-side alternative recipes, and its marvelous way of linking recipes, ingredients, geographical biases and lore into nearly endless chains of ideas is a great inspiration. So often, different sources say very different things about a food, and the Larousse becomes the arbiter of these disagreements. It is authoritative and comprehensive.

But it can be a pain in the tenderloin to use as a cookbook. Its recipes, even in the most recent editions, can be too dense, too full of recondite practices, and just too damned French in their prejudices and presuppositions. So I've always used it as a first source, but rarely for practical guidance with individual dishes. For years I have returned to the same unfulfilled wish: to have the recipes excerpted, reorganized, edited, and cleaned up for kitchen use. Sometimes you just need to know how much onion goes in the soup without all the chauvanistic opinions about onions in their many forms. I am very pleased to say that the editors at Larousse have produced exactly this book.

The book is in fact four: meats, fish and seafoods, vegetables, and deserts are separately bound into four handy volumes. The books are compact, beautifully designed following the old French format of one recipe in paragraph-form per page, with saddle-stitched bindings and stain-resistant covers. The volumes come in a strong paperboard box. With some gentle stretching the books will lie open on the counter. Each volume is intelligently arranged by major ingredient or thematic relevance. Everything is easy to find [assuming you know some French], and easy to use. Leave your full Larousse in the library, and keep this recipe collection near the stove. Or, since it is so incredibly inexpensive at Amazon, buy two and let one get encrusted in Cassoulet sauce.

One caveat: The French-format recipes may take some getting used to. You'll have to be careful to line up your ingredients, since they are not listed except as needed within the paragraph. This format works very well if you are a reasonably experienced cook who is comfortable reading a recipe through and then improvising the dish as you go. If you need precise instructions, other cookbooks might be more accessible. But if you know a mirepoix is a highly-variable mixture of vegetables, you can relax and let the recipes suggest a direction, and adjust as needed. Where exact instructions are more important, with delicate pastries and souffles, for example, you may want to supplement these recipes with a step-by-step cookbook, but for Coq au Vin, just dive in and let go your fears of imperfection.

I highly recommend this monumental compendium for every cook who loves French food. It is fast becoming one of the vertebra of my cookbook library.