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The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford Companions) | 
| Author: Alan Davidson
Creators: Jane Davidson, Helen Saberi, Tom Jaine
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Category: Book
List Price: £40.00 (41.49EUR)
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Seller: Amazon.co.uk
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 9794
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2
Pages: 907
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6.6
Dimensions (in): 11.1 x 9.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 0192806815
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.3003
EAN: 9780192806819
ASIN: 0192806815
Publication Date: September 21, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Product Description
Features a repertory of foodstuffs, cooked dishes, and food processes, together with entries that cover the food and foodways of the countries of the world, and the literature of food and cookery. This edition includes articles on topics that reflect the development and universal relevance of food studies.
Amazon.co.uk 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) contributes approximately 80% 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 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' 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
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
Great book July 29, 2010
Gailious
Heard about this book from watching a tv programme so had not seen the book before I purchased it. Would recommend it to any one who is interested in food or even if you are not that interested. Full of lots of wonderful information. Really glad I purchased it. Have had hours of fun just looking through it at random
The greatest authority on food in English. April 21, 2010
Graham Taylor (Surrey,GB)
Stunningly comprehensive, the text is clearly written and elegantly crafted. A joy to own, it has the capacity to absorb the reader for hours at a time! A truly great work that should be in the collection of everyone with more than a passing interest in food.
The ultimate food book April 21, 2010
ellarose (Norfolk UK)
This is the ultimate food book.Want to know where a certain food came from? How it's used? No recipes but EVERYTHING you want to know about food. I keep mine in the kitchen all the time as a reference book. It makes interesting reading just browsing through it. It's a huge book and well worth the money. A good talking point at dinner parties!
Love food? Love cooking? Love learning? Love good writing? Love this book! January 31, 2010
L. E. May (Camden Town, London, England)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I love - and am in awe - of polymaths. How I would love to have met the late, great, Alan Davidson, perhaps over a dinner of his choosing or in a ship's wardroom bar; he even looks fun in the photograph of him! A double first in classics at Oxford, a wartime Royal Navy officer, a career British diplomat and one time HM Ambassador to Laos, food expert, food writer and cook, and author of this wonderful book, some twenty years in the writing. What a man - what a book! What a legacy to the world to leave such a feast of a book as this!
Everyone who likes food should have a copy in the kitchen at home; refer to it when you want to know more, of course, but pick it up and find a titbit regarding the meal that you are preparing and cooking - there's always a spare moment or two! Your guests will enjoy the morsel you give them, I am sure. But, when on your own, occasionally let this book be your dining companion; I can guarantee that it will be more of a friend, over the years, than some of the people you have broken the fast with!
Take this book as a gift to your favourite cook and give a copy to your children. Every kitchen and galley should have a copy, as should every maître-chef, sous-chef and bon oeuf, every catering office and catering college classroom. It's an ideal prize, too, for first class chefs.
This second edition is even better than the first. It's still heavy, but it's still light reading, for it is so well-written; like the author surely enjoyed his food, you get the sense that he enjoyed researching and writing this magnum opus. I certainly enjoy digesting it. There are some 72 new entries in this edition; I just hope that not one of the entries in the first edition has been removed so as to find room in this second course. The range of entries is astonishing, with titbits for every food person, and the setting of each page is as pleasing as a well-laid dining table. There are stories and vignettes galore; the author's ability to illustrate food in all its appetising varieties seems endless. A comprehensive bibliography and helpful index are in the green section at the back, and the maps of the "Columbian Exchange" and "selected global food migrations" are an excellent addition.
The list of entries for each alphabetical section is just a new design feature but it's useful, too, for tempting the reader to browse topics at random. Indeed, this design feature should be extended in the next edition to provide a comprehensive list of the contents of each alphabetical section; it would be very helpful in such a voluminous book.
Not copiously illustrated, the drawings by Soun Vannithone, are nevertheless very good indeed. I would love to have seen photographs of the principal vegetables and fruits, growing naturally, growing in cultivation, as picked, as sold in the market and as prepared for cooking, but perhaps that would send the price of the book to that of a Michelin-star restaurant meal.
Let me give you a taster of the range of subjects covered. I must necessarily ration this list to just a few appetisers - I want to leave you hungry for more, but that is easy enough as there are, all told, some 2,711 headwords in the book! Try this alphabetical soup for starters: Afternoon tea; Albatross; Barm brack; Blewit; Char; Custard; Dab; Dripping; Easter foods; Escoffier; Figgy pudding; Film and food; Gallimaufrey; Golden syrup; Haleem; hungry (well it's not a headword in the book, truth be told (though Hungary is), but if you are hungry then go and raid your larder - and, later, raid your piggy bank and buy this book, so you can pursue Imitation foods; Inuit cookery; Jelly and Junket through to Washing up; Yabby; Yam; Zakuski and Zuppa inglese!
I wanted to give Alan Davidson's banquet of a book some six stars, not five; how could anyone give it less? If food is the new religion, then this is surely the new bible. And, if I were allowed one book only, then this would have to be it but sadly not, of course, to take with my eight discs to that BBC radio Desert Island (along with The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare), as it would be make one even more hungry and thus more likely to try to escape!
On 17 March 2010, BBC4 televised a documentary called "The Man Who Ate Everything" - a one-hour personal portrait of Alan Davidson (1924-2003): it was a wonderful tribute to this great man.
 Classic December 25, 2009
Janet Koch (Hampshire)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Excellent for the serious foodie but needs noting no recipes in book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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