repertory of cooking

[et alors]

IN Pepin's Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook, he refers to the 7,500 recipes in the `Repertory of Cooking', all of which consist of little more than a few statements giving the principle features of a dish.

Needless to say, I want this book.

Strangely I can find no other reference to it.

Anyone have a clue?

[ryanj]

Probably referring to "LE repetoire de cuise." Great book to keep in the back pocket. Old School. Look for it at used book stores(where I got mine) or amazon. Probably not available readily in regular stores.

[Fugu]

Aside from Le Repertoire De La Cusine, you may want to consider "Herring's Dictionary Of Classical and Modern Cookery"?... Another old school.

[jackal10]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Repertoire-Cuisine...97189445&sr=8-1

Le Repertoire De La Cuisine (Hardcover)

by L. Saulnier (Author), E. Brunet (Translator)

An essential classic

[MaxH]

Great book to keep in the back pocket. Old School.

Exactly. I have Saulnier, the English translation, it's a tiny book (by cookbook standards), more a dictionary or quick-reference guide rather than recipe book.

That English translation is extremely available in a modern facsimile printing (hardcover) on amazon.com, currently about $13 new or $7 used, or your favorite online book dealer, as ISBN 0812051084 . French ed. is also available.

I don't use it much -- more a novelty item, interesting though. Classic French reference cookbooks, more influential and packed with practical information, which I've consulted often and used directly for 30 years, and all of them mentioned repeatedly on this site, are the Guide Culinaire (Escoffier); the encyclopedic Larousse Gastronomique in various editions, the widely available 1961 Crown English translation being the most famous in the US and good even for wicked pleasure reading, see past postings here; and Mme. de Saint-Ange's Livre de Cuisine, comparable in size and content to the others, I don't know if it's in English too, but that doesn't fundamentally matter because it's a cookbook, cookbooks by nature use small everyday vocabularies repeatedly. I believe anyone who can read English well and consult a dictionary when necessary has access to most of the content of a book like Saint-Ange even if they've never learned French. (Which is technically never true anyway: French was a major donor tongue for English after AD 1066 and accounts for some fraction of current English vocabulary.)

[et alors]

Great book to keep in the back pocket. Old School.

I believe anyone who can read English well and consult a dictionary when necessary has access to most of the content of a book like Saint-Ange even if they've never learned French. (Which is technically never true anyway: French was a major donor tongue for English after AD 1066 and accounts for some fraction of current English vocabulary.)

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Not to take the topic too off topic, but I bought La Base when it was only in French some years back and despite having a good street-french vocabulary and a pretty extensive French food vocabulary (including odd but important terms like cuillères à soupe), I couldn't make the book useful (though it was always very very sexy).

perhaps you underestimate your French! Anyhow, found it translated thanks to you kind folks, and have it on order....

[MaxH]

Not to take the topic too off topic, but I bought La Base when it was only in French some years back and despite having a good street-french vocabulary and a pretty extensive French food vocabulary ... I couldn't make the book useful (though it was always very very sexy).  / perhaps you underestimate your French!

That's very kind, though some who know me would beg to disagree ...

But I haven't seen that particular book. I mentioned specifically the case of Saint-Ange's Livre de Cuisine (Paris: Librarie Larousse, 1927) which I wouldn't characterize as sexy by the way, though sometimes quirky and opinionated, like many unique cookbooks; and have noticed that the rule applied to other cookbooks widely considered standard, though I can't claim it applies to every title, not having read them all. I've found the rule true, broadly, for general cookbooks in various European languages -- notably German where I've done some research and extended translations (without being fluent) and where, though the grammatical style was distinct in my experience from both the conversational tongue and from typical format of English recipe narratives, still the vocabulary has been narrow in several representative books. (Mercifully: since even though described by my scholarly friends as an offshoot Germanic language, English gets remarkably few of its food nouns from that source compared to others.)