The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity

The timeless guide to culinary creativity and flavor exploration, based on the wisdom of the world's most innovative chefs Eight years in the making, The Flavor Bible is a landmark book that will inspire the greatest creations of innovative cooks and chefs by serving as an indispensable guide to creativity and flavor affinities in today's kitchen.

Cuisine is undergoing a startling historic transformation: With the advent of the global availability of ingredients, dishes are no longer based on geography but on flavor. This radical shift calls for a new approach to cooking -- as well as a new genre of "cookbook" that serves not to document classic dishes via recipes, but to inspire the creation of new ones based on imaginative and harmonious flavor combinations.

The Flavor Bible is your guide to hundreds of ingredients along with the herbs, spices, and other seasonings that will allow you to coax the greatest possible flavor and pleasure from them. This astonishing reference distills the combined experience of dozens of America's most innovative culinarians, representing such celebrated restaurants as A Voce, Babbo, Blue Hill, Café Atlántico, Chanterelle, Citronelle, Gramercy Tavern, the Herbfarm, Jardinière, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin, the Modern, Moto, and the Trellis.

You'll learn to: explore the individual roles played by the four basic tastes -- salty, sour, bitter, and sweet -- and how to bring them into harmony; work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients by discovering which flavors have the strongest affinities for one another; brighten flavors through the use of acids -- from vinegars to citrus juices to herbs and spices such as Makrut lime and sumac; deepen or intensify flavors through the layering of specific ingredients and techniques; and balance the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of cooking and serving an extraordinary meal.

Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from the country's most respected chefs and pastry chefs, The Flavor Bible is an essential book for every kitchen library.

Inspired ... Open yourself to a delicious new experience.
―Oprah Winfrey in O Magazine

About the Authors

Karen Page is a two-time James Beard Award-winning author whose books include The Flavor Bible, which was named one of the year's best cookbooks on both Today and Good Morning America, one of the 100 best cookbooks of the last twenty-five years by Cooking Light, and one of the ten best cookbooks in the world of the past century by Forbes. The former Washington Post wine columnist is also the author of What to Drink with What You Eat, which was named the IACP Cookbook of the Year and Georges Duboeuf Wine Book of the Year. She lives with her husband, author and photographer Andrew Dornenburg, in New York City.

Andrew Dornenburg studied with the legendary Madeleine Kamman at the School for American Chefs and has cooked professionally in top restaurants in New York City. Their website is www.becomingachef.com.