Silver Palate 25th Anniversary Edition

[Bella S.F.]

Does anyone know if the 25th Anniversary edition of The Silver Palate Cookbook has been changed in any way from the original? Have any of the recipes been updated, made healthier by today's standards, etc.

I have always been told that that cookbook is a must have, in its own way, classic. I do have The New Basics by the same people, and really like it, sometimes more for reading than even for the recipes.

So, what's the scoop on the new "Palate"?

[MelissaH]

Does anyone know if the 25th Anniversary edition of The Silver Palate Cookbook has been changed in any way from the original? Have any of the recipes been updated, made healthier by today's standards, etc.

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I've wondered the same thing.

My local independent bookstore actually has a copy in stock at the moment. Maybe I'll bring some goodies in for the staff, and settle in my favorite chair with my old copy and the new copy, and do a head-to-head comparison.

MelissaH

[Bella S.F.]

Sounds like a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Please let us know what you find.

Thanks!

[MelissaH]

What I brought:

A freezer container of freshly made pear sorbet. When I picked up my copy of The Perfect Scoop, one of the people who works there said that it was cruel to order such a book and then not bring any ice cream in. So I did. They were delighted.

What I found:

In the new edition, the first change I noticed was a new introduction. The second change I noticed was that the hand-drawn illustrations of various dishes were gone, replaced with photographs. The overall appearance of the new hardcover book is also much glossier than my old paperback edition.

The index is a little bit more comprehensive: the old index was strictly recipes, but the new one also includes proper names of people mentioned in the various stories. There's apparently a reference to Alice in Wonderland somewhere in the text, because there's an index entry. I didn't look to see what it was.

Some of the sidebar notes and headnotes to recipes have been modified slightly, either to reflect new suppliers of some ingredients (one headnote in the charcuterie section specifically mentions Paul Bertolli's sausages) or because times have changed slightly and they no longer need to specifically define terms or ingredients for today's audience.

But when I compared recipes head-to-head, I found that the order had been changed slightly, presumably to make things fit on pages better, BUT the recipes themselves were still the same. "White cabbage" and "sweet butter" have become "green cabbage" and "unsalted butter" in the new edition. In a few cases, the order of ingredients was rearranged slightly; the one that sticks in my mind is that the shrimp jumped to the top of an ingredient list because direction #1 is now "peel and devein shrimp" but in the old edition, IIRC the shrimp were listed somewhere in the middle, as "shrimp, peeled and deveined" but without the explicit instruction to peel and devein them.

I did notice two changes to the text. One was in the chart of apple varieties. Apparently Fameuse apples are no longer available, as they're gone, replaced with Gala. (Isn't it convenient how the two variety names are close enough alphabetically that it's an easy swap without having to do anything else to the table? ) And the other text change is that the list of Silver Palate prepared items in the back has been replaced by a metric conversion chart.

My verdict: if you already have the old edition of the book, don't bother with the new one. If you're looking for the book, you'd be just as well finding a used copy that's cheaper than the new edition. They're essentially identical, unless you absolutely need to have photographs with less information than the old hand-drawn illustrations.

MelissaH