"Formulas for Flavours" (John Campbell)

[iainpb]

Has anyone read 'Formulas for Flavours' by John Campbell, it looks like an interesting read but i suspect it may fail on its promise of teching restaurant style cooking at home. Has anyone read it or is anyone familiar with the author?

Link to book on Amazon

[lamington]

It's a respected book, well written and quite definitely doing restaurant-level dishes. It's enjoyable to use and there are quite a few useful process/technique photos. Recipes are presented in metric and UK imperial measures. The book is accessible to most people who are fairly confident in the kitchen.

Why did you suspect it would fail to teach?

[iainpb]

I've seen many books that make claims of turning you into a master chef or teaching you michelin star quality food for your own home and on looking through them i often find they are not that great. I was looking for some opinions of people that have read and used it (rather than the often rash ill considered reviews that grace amazon).

Have you found the book particularly useful? Do you have any favourite techniques recipes that you learned from this book?

[lamington]

Have you found the book particularly useful? Do you have any favourite techniques  recipes that you learned from this book?

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I found the book very useful in understanding some techniques better, and in understanding the process of preparing complex dishes in stages, how to time elements, etc. The book stimulates with some techniques/components which might not have been familiar to readers eight years ago, such as powdered fennel and mushroom, chocolate oil, licorice foams, savoury ice creams. That said, Campbell isn't trying to wow the reader with excessive modernity, so to speak (ie, it's not all bells and whistles). I find this book easier to read/use and more to-the-point than, say, The French Laundry.

The title of the book is perhaps the least good aspect of it -- "formulas for flavours": the book is actually about the idea of producing great tasting restaurant-level dishes using appropriate techniques and plating, rather than analysing flavours as per, say, The Flavor Bible (Page/Dornenburg) or The Elements of Taste (Kunz).

If you're already competent in serious technique, then whether this book suits you would be very much a matter of taste.