The Artful Eater: A Gourmet Investigates the Ingredients of Great Food

by Edward Behr

What makes good food good? When Edward Behr sets out to answer that question, his quest leads from the seemingly prosaic properties of salt and pepper to the differences among vanilla of different Bourbon, Mexican, Tahitian. Plenty is written about food all the time, but only a little of that contributes to a fuller appreciation for and understanding of basic ingredients. Behr does that along with providing mouthwatering descriptions of flavors, textures, and aromas.
In The Artful Eater, with intellectual curiosity and physical pleasure, Behr unveils the complexities of bean, roasting, and brewing that make a perfect cup of coffee. He investigates why some cream has much more dairy flavor than others, why gray salt tastes more intense than white, why some Southern country ham is on the same level as great Italian prosciutto. Behr investigates eggs, walnuts, wild and tame sorrel, Atlantic salmon, roast beef, and apples, among other foods.
He enriches our enjoyment of eating by tracing the natural origins and cultural history of these foods. By consulting mustard seed brokers in Saskatchewan, mussels growers in Maine, ham curers in Kentucky, a spice merchant in Baltimore, and a walnut researcher in Bordeaux, Behr discovers truths about quality that are all but unknown.
The Artful Eater contains a good measure of practical information--there are recipes and advice on the correct use and preparation of food. But at its heart the book is an appreciation of individual ingredients, the excellent raw materials on which all great food depends.

Genres: Food, Food Writing, Cooking, Nonfiction, Cookbooks

293 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1991

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eighteen essays on individual ingredients (salt, tomatoes, herbs, mussels, sorrel, salmon, pepper, country ham, bay leaves, carrots, mustards, roast beef, eggs, apples, cream, vanilla, walnuts, and coffee). Some portions are very good reading; however, the overall tone is too self-conciously hip.

[Sophia1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

During our non fiction unit, I read a book called The Artful Eater by Edward Behr. This book gave a lot of facts about the background of different foods and described what they were. Many people don’t know a lot about the food they are eating and cooking with. It is important for people to know the backgrounds of the food they are using so they can figure out how to tell a high quality food from a low quality food and to know where and how to use the food. He had a couple pictures in the book to help the reader see what the different foods looked like.
When I first saw this book, I thought it was going to be a little boring because I saw that it had lots and lots of facts. As i read the book, I realized i really liked how the author put his words together. The author wrote the facts out in a way that was like telling a story. I never got bored from reading it. Most non fiction books get boring because they are just a bunch of facts but this one was like a well put together story. In this book, one of the many things I learned was how to tell a high quality vanilla bean from a lower quality vanilla bean. A higher quality bean is more oily than most. I found this interesting because I didn’t know that you could tell a low quality bean from a high quality bean just from the look of it.
Overall, I thought this book was very good and more people should read it. It has a lot of useful information and good description. I would recommend this book to people 12 and up because there are some harder vocabulary words. I would also recomend this book to anyone who is interested in the culinary industry.

[Jbl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Behr is the most lucid contemporary writer about food or wine. His magazine is equally Erudite.

[Melanie Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

He also has a very cool quarterly journal/magazine by the same name. Sometimes a bit full of himself

[Scotty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea. While covering topics of interest to me, the style seemed overblown, self important and pretentious. I'll the John Thorne any day.