This book lists every possible ingredient (truffles, cumin, etc.), popular dishes (beef bourgonion(?), etc.) and every cooking term/technique (flambe, roux, etc.) in alphabetical order. With regards to a type of food, it will often list the various countries of origin (....this is found in Central America and in Southeast Asia...), how it is often used in cooking (....this is often sliced thinly and then pan-fried....), what to look for when selecting a certain type of produce at the store (...it should be relatively heavy for its size, with a smooth skin....), and how to store it (...this should be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days in a sealed plastic bag with a damp paper towel...), etc. Some of the food entries will also include information on vitamin content.

For cooking techniques, they will explain for e.g. how to make a roux, or what it means to blanche vegetables (....quickly plunge the vegetables into boiling water, and then place them in cold water to stop the cooking process...).

This book is also handy because it cross-references alot, and so as such, can provide you with needed information if you ever find yourself missing an ingredient, and want to substitute.

If you are someone who's constantly interested in improving their cooking skills, this book is indispensible in helping you achieve that. I also enjoy just reading through the book sometimes, to learn new things.

I love the feel and weight of this book and the ease of which you can use this book to look up terms fast and furiously when you are writing about food. The rounded corners on the pages make this a book you can flip through very easily and it is all pleasantly alphabetical.

The Contents Include:

Terms: The volume of the work.

The Extras:

Ingredient Equivalents
Substituting Ingredients
Pan Substitution Chart
High-Altitude Baking Adjustments
Boiling Point of Water at Various Altitudes
General Temperature Equivalents
Hand Test for Grilling Temperatures
Oven Temperatures
Fahrenheit/Celsius Conversion Formulas
Microwave Oven Conversion Chart
Recommended Safe cooking Temperatures

Candymaking Cold-Water Tests
Frying Temperatures
Smoke Points of Popular Oils
Fatty Acid Profiles of Popular Oils
U.S. Measurement Equivalents
Wine and Spirit Bottle Sizes
Approximate Metric Equivalents
Metric Conversion Formulas
Food Guide Pyramid
What's a Serving?
Food Label Terms
A Guide to Food Labels
Pasta Glossary
British and American Food and Cooking Terms
Consumer Information Sources
Meat Charts
Additives Directory

Did I say this was Comprehensive? For food lovers this reaches a point of inspiration unlike any other book on food I've found. I love having so much information all in one book. It is literally a food dictionary which describes food in all its delicious detail.

This book has received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic acceptance in the culinary community. For home cooks, it is also a real bonus and could be considered an essential compliment to your entire cookbook collection.

This edition has changed slightly. The listings increased to almost 6,000 and there are thousands of food tidbits sprinkled throughout the tantalizing pages of information. I love the historical lore and information on the exotic origins of some of our most innocent and sweet selections. Vanilla is suddenly seductive and is actually native to tropical America.

"The vanilla bean was once considered an aphrodisiac, and was so rare that it was reserved for royalty....The saga begins with the orchid blossoms, which open only one day a year."

There are almost three pages filled with information on this orchid. Who would have known unless you were doing intensive research. Sharon Tyler Herbst has given us an incredible gift by doing the research for us.

If you are unsure of how to pronounce an ingredient, there are pronunciations for all the basic words.

The basic bibliomaniac delights in this book include:

-Entries arranged alphabetically and cross-referenced

-Alphabetization by letter, rather than just by word, so that multiple-word entries are treated as single words.

-Multicultural entries galore!

khachapuri
pakora
fraise des bois

- Beloved Terms from French Cooking like "pâte à choux"

- Cooking Methods described for new cooks

- Famous Dishes like the "Sacher torte" are seen in a completely new light

- Cooking Equipment also known as "batterie de cuisine."

When looking up beef jerky you will be sent to look up "Jerky." So as not to repeat information, this occurs at various times. This allows Sharon to be more extravagant with other entries. Did you know that tomatoes were once called "love apples?"

You can also look up cooking tools like a pastry brush or a mortar and pestle. I think culinary catalog owners should all have a copy of this book because at times I've had to point out the error of their ways when they have listed kitchen tools incorrectly. One had the mortar and pestle reversed in their description and this was very amusing to me at least.

This book may also stir childhood memories. Like when your parents battered and dipped "squash blossoms." As I read, the faint scent of frying blossoms floated through my scent memory. Don't even ask me how hungry I get when I read about key lime pie. To find out more about the actual limes used in the pie, you turn to "lime." Here you learn that the key lime is much smaller and once I realized the difference I was able to buy the correct limes for pies.

I had memories of sitting up in a mulberry tree while reading that there are actually three varieties of mulberries. All I know is we tried to make pies and jam with the ones we picked fresh from this absolutely huge tree when we lived in Africa. They are not as good as youngberries or raspberries, but have a charm all of their own.

If you still are trying to discover foods like Yorkshire Pudding, you will not be dissapointed. However, this book does not contain recipes and so it will send you off hunting in all directions for ways to use the ingredients listed in such a lovely fashion. You may find yourself looking for online catalogs or even online scouting out your newest culinary interests.

Cooking is an amazing journey and you can enjoy the journey all the more if you have more insight into the terms, definitions, origins and lore of food. Now I feel compelled to go make more biscotti and definitely need to make crullers if I could only find my recipe.

I guess my only complaint is that this book does not contain pictures. For that you will have to search elsewhere. Perhaps a copy of "Cooking Hints & Tips" by Christine France would be helpful to new cooks. "Cooking A-Z" by Jane Horn is a beautiful discovery. "The Cambridge World History of Food" by Kenneth F. Kiple is extensive and another must-have "encyclopedia" of food.

If you have not yet discovered "The New Food Lover's Tiptionary" it is also a must read and is "also" by Sharon Tyler Herbst.

America's best-selling culinary reference and for good reason! An absolute must for your cook's library.

Did I mention I was absolutely in love with this book?

TheRebeccaReview.com

Simply put, Cliffs AP Biology is the ONLY AP BIO book you will need.

I took AP Biology last year as a junior with a teacher who had never before taught an AP class. It was difficult to keep on schedule with the material in class. In fact, my class did not even finish studying animal anatomy and physiology. Despite this, I still got a five on the test. Now don't get me wrong, this guide would probably be extremely difficult to make sense of with no textbook, but this book really helped me get my facts straight and rush through the key parts that my class omitted. I cannot compare it with other study guides out there, but I think that this is the only study guide I have ever used that really had an affect on my grades in class, and on my final AP test.

Good luck, and down with the evil college board!

Good luck everybody taking the AP exam.

In some ways, I feel that I have learnt much more in my review during the past few days, than what I have learnt in class.

Had I covered the whole book, yes, a 5 would have been expected.

Everyone in our class reading group loved the book - except for the ending. :( The authors style was imaginative and very expressive. The sentences flowed for a good 'read'. We would recommend this book because it was suspenseful, interesting, and educational. It's a learning experience book for children. You always wanted to know what was going to happen next.

He kept coming to mind as I was reading this incredible book, as the characters, stranded on an island with absolutely nothing, accomplished such amazing feats as draining a lake, making a home, building a ship, making an elevator, and a great many other things. There is excitement, suspense (what IS going on on this mysterious island??), and wonderful, likeable characters. Not a real well-known Verne book, but fortunately still in print, and one of his best and most entertaining.

(Incidentally, if you want a children's version of the same story, try to find "A Long Vacation" by Jules Verne, which is extremely similar in plot, but with younger characters and for a younger audience - very charming!)

By the way, please do read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea first, if you have not already done so. Evidently, Verne assumed that everyone had when he wrote this novel.

Great reading!

Mention Jules Verne, and books that spring to mind are 20,000 Leagues, Around the World in 80 days, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The Mysterious Island is one of his lesser known works, which is something of a mystery itself.

The book surpasses one's imagination and never fails to surprise. From the initial pages when Capt. Cyrus Harding and his friends decide to escape from a prison camp, the story seizes the complete attention of the reader, and unfolds at a pace and in a direction excelling Jules Verne's characteristic stories. The spirit and ingenuity of man is demonstrated in almost every page, as Cyrus and Co. find themselves marooned on a deserted island, and armed with only their wits, transform their desperate situation into a wonder world of science and technology. The reader is drawn into the adventure and finds himself trying to find solutions to the problems and obstacles that lie in plenty for the castaways, as Cyrus and his indomitable friends surmount myriad problems in their fight for survival. They are aided in their ventures by an uncanny and eerie source that remains a mystery until the very end.

This book cannot fail to fascinate and inspire awe in the mind of any reader. One begins to grasp the marvels and inventive genius behind the simple daily conveniences and devices that are normally taken for granted. The line between reality and fantasy is incredibly thin, and for sheer reading pleasure and boundless adventure, this book will never cease to please.

PS: The book has been adapted into a movie, which is one of the worst adaptations of any novel that I have ever had the misfortune of viewing. It is criminal to even mention the movie and the original work in the same breath.

Incidents is an excellent reading selection for a bookgroup and a book that I highly recommend to everyone. Remember the story and share the story so that history doesn't repeat itself.

Incidents follows the "true story" (its authenticity is doubted in some places) of Linda [Jacobs uses a pseudonym] who is born into the shackles of slavery and yearns for freedom. She lives with a depraved slave master who dehumanizes her, and a mistress who mistreats her. As the novel progresses, Linda becomes increasingly starved of freedom and resolves to escape, but Linda finds that even escaping presents its problems.

But Incidents is more than just a gripping narration of one woman's crusade for freedom, and is rather an organized attack on Slavery, intended to convince even the most apathetic of northerners. And in this too, Incidents succeeds. The writing is clear, and Jacobs' use of rhetorical strategy to preserve integrity is astonishing.

Well written, convincing, entertaining, Incidents is an amazing book.

The creativity and imagination incorporated into the story make it the most unique story I've ever read. It made every page interesting and compels you to read on. From almost no references, the author created a magical world and creatures that once roamed the country of Fincayra. There seemed to be a history behind every living creature in the book and it was facinating to learn someone's illustration of what Merlin's childhood was like. The author's tales of a rich and sometimes dangerous world filled my mind with wonder and how magnificent something can be if from imagination, because there are no boundaries. This takes you away from what was really happening in Britain during the 5th-6th century; the plague, disasters and the fall of the Roman Empire. The creation of a fictional world with such detail made it seem like I was there, speaking to the trees or tasting the fruit of the Druma Wood. So, read it, you'll be glad you did!

You should read this book for many reasons. One is that it flows well and is not confusing. Some books just skip from subject to subject, but this one, however, does not and continues through the story. Another reason is that even though it is a fantasy it is somehow believable. All the creatures could never actually exist but with the wonderful description used, the author has brought them to life. That would be enough to make me read a book.

Some people might not enjoy this book because of the amount of fantasy incorporated. But if you don't like fantasy you should still read this book because the fantasy isn't extreme and it might even make you like fantasy because it is so well written. Overall this is an excellent book that is both inspiring and imaginative. You should read it a.s.a.p.

If you are looking for a great fantasy epic, may I STRONGLY recommend the Lost Years of Merlin Epic! I recommend you read them in order, though. :)