What makes this book an essential tome for any gourmet cook, experienced or beginner, is the simplicity. Everything is easy to find and explained fully. All too many cookbooks assume that the cook already knows the basics by heart and don't bother to mention how to start a white sauce or "sauce béchamel" with a roux, even though this only means using a base of butter and flour! Anything rudimentary that you need to know can be found here, along with hundreds of marvelous recipes that all go back to the basics. As Julia Child once said "sometimes you have chocolate, and sometimes there's fish, but the basics are the same" and indeed this book shows you how, giving several examples of what to do with each major kind of dough, sauce, bread or wine. Included also are many historical perspectives into the history of fine cooking and good eating!

This book is essential for anyone interested in food. Here you will find the history of food, you will learn what to do with the seasonal vegetable you picked up at the grocer, and you will discover what are the regoinal specalities of the area you are traveling to. Whenever I come across an ingridient I haven't used before, I always open the Larousse Gastronomique to learn about it: how to use it, how to store it, what else can I do with it. From this encyclopedia of food one may also learn about how classic dishes came to be, and when did restaurants start existing. Some entries are devoted to important people, such as Fauchon and Escoffier. Anyone interested in cooking, eating, or both, will treasure this book - or should I say, treasure this treasure. My only reservation - the book is very Franco-centered.

Don't expect a great recipe book when you buy this. It includes a large number of recipes, but these are there to demonstrate the use of key ingredients rather than as recipes that you are expected to follow.

However, the book is invaluable and, I believe, unique as a reference when you come across a question about food and cuisine that is difficult to answer. I've been handed woodcock and expected to cook them - do you remove the entrails or not? You read in a recipe to use a bain-marie - what is it? What is the difference between Anna potatoes, Boulangere potatoes and Chateau potatoes? ... and so on. I don't know of any other book that can so comprehensively answer EVERY food/cooking question that I've come across.

In addition to being the best available encyclopaedia of food and cooking, the Larousse Gastronomique is FUN. It is one of those books that can sit beside your bed for browsing ... just open the book at a random page and see where you get to ... every page (and there are a lot of them) has several entries that are interesting and illuminating.

In a world that has become dominated by glossily illustrated books by designer chefs, where the typeface and photographs are more important than the contents of the book, this book is a truly refreshing, entertaining and useful volume.