Τα Γαστριμαργικά Ανάλεκτα Του Κυρίου Schott

Schott's Miscellanies

by Ben Schott, Κατερίνα Σχινά (Translator)

"Τα γαστριμαργικά ανάλεκτα του κ. Schott" είναι μια συλλογή από αυθεντικές trifles. Σκοπός του βιβλίου είναι να μαζέψει τα ψίχουλα που έχουν αφρόντιστα σκορπιστεί πάνω στο τραπεζομάντιλο των γαστριμαργικών συζητήσεων.

"Τα γαστριμαργικά ανάλεκτα του κ. Schott" δεν εξαντλούν το θέμα τους, δεν διεκδικούν δάφνες αυθεντίας, δεν έχουν πρακτικό στόχο. Σε μια κουζίνα μεγέθους αναλέκτων δεν θα είχε κανείς τη δυνατότητα να προετοιμάσει ένα πλήρες γεύμα a la carte -αντιθέτως, το βιβλίο ελπίζει να ανοίξει την όρεξη με ένα μενού γευσιγνωσίας, άλλως digustation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Food, Cooking, Cookbooks, Trivia, Food and Drink

162 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Sophie Crane]

An excellent book full of facts that you never wanted to know, once you start to read this you will not out it down.

[Shannon]

The second book of Miscellany (after Schott's Original Miscellany), this one focuses on food and drink (obviously), throughout the ages and across the world. Includes everything from cocktail mixes to gout, the history of popcorn and breakfast quotations. Hilarious, informative and fascinating.

[Ralph]

Slim volume on all sorts of food esoterica. Was especially intrigued reading about the "Bristol Stool Form Chart."

For hard core foodies only.

[Susan]

If you like cooking and have a sense of curiosity, this is the book for you. On the first page, we find short write-ups on equine savouries, saffron, formal meal times, and smoke-rings. On the second, there’s popcorn, gourmands and indigestion, and Melba toast. And here are also drinking cheers from Afrikaans to Welsh, “brimmers, bumpers, buzzes, back-handers, & bishops”, tea grading nomenclature, films featuring cannibalism, breakfast quotations, diagrams for measuring spaghetti servings, a list of things Homer Simpson has drooled “Mmm...”over and many other curious, useful, and diverting facts. Delightfully entertaining.

[Harvey]

- wildly eclectic collection of miscellaneous cooking information/history: how to cook a swan (and why it's illegal), how Hemingway liked his Martinis, why asparagus makes your urine smell funny, how to read tea leaves and blow smoke rings, how to raise a toast in Romanian, napkin folding techniques, pasta shapes, death row convicts' last meal menus
- the five tastes: Salt, Sour, Bitter, Sweet, and Umami (globally recognized in only the last ten years or so, as the 'savoury' or 'meaty' taste sensations - stimulated by condiments like soy sauce or foods with glutamate - like M.S.G.
- quite entertaining

[Jessica]

Read this in a tent cabin in yosemite and now every time someone tells me a random fact I get a sense memory of pine tree smells. Also, it was so interesting and good.

[Gregor]

perfect bogside reading matter, full of interesting facts.

[H James]

I’m admiring of Mr Schott’s page design and his conception of a book that can be consumed one randomly selected page at a time, but the amount of typographical hiccups is maddening, the amount of obvious misinformation dismaying. I appreciate that he was working in 2003 (i.e., with somewhat less capable layout software and without the font of knowledge that is Wikipedia), but searching for and automatically removing accidental double spaces was as doable then as it is now, and anyone with even moderate cooking knowledge should have questioned the veracity of a table in which the given smokepoint of sunflower oil is lower than that of olive oil, so my sympathy is limited.

[Ron]

A droll compendium of whatever Ben Schott felt was interesting or amusing about food and drink. I question the need to know the Thai words for food measurements, or the entire dopey jingle of Burns's haggis poem, but it is easy to skip over entries that are too twee.
Read as bedtime reading, for which it was excellent. Short entries, some amusing and others worth knowing, sort of.
I will remember to keep it on hand to look up stuff that might come up in conversations.

[Elisala]

Un recueil assez incroyable de petites informations autour de la gastronomie, souvent drôles, souvent parfaitement inutiles, mais tout autant indispensables.
Je n'ai même pas encore lu les miscellanées non culinaires du même Mr Schott, mais ce deuxième opus me donne envie de m'y attaquer, car ça se lit avec délice et un petit sourire aux coins des lèvres.

[Roger]

This was a fun collection of trivia, with lots of historical anecdotes. I agree with one of the other reviewers that it is perfect for "bathroom" reading. Great to digest a page at a time.

[Justine]

Just like the "first" book, this one is so great!! The reader learns so many things!
Warning: I felt disgust reading some articles like on horse meat or things like that.

[Nicholas Ball]

Ben Schott does it again. Bizarre, fascinating, eclectic - everything a miscellany should be. Amish seating conventions, Mr Burns' breakfast, the fate of the poor orlotan, it's all here..

[Tanner]

Eh

[Kara]

A fun little book stuffed full of all sorts of random food and drink based facts and figures.

[Victoria]

Perfect amount of random knowledge on food.

[Gail Wylde]

A lovely little book full of useful/less information about anything and everything to do with food and drink.

[Kim]

Very charming, great trivia.

[Katrina]

audio-some of the voices annoyed me, especially since they were from main characters, Jake and Suzanne.

[kirk]

This book explicitly claims not to be practical (In case you didn't get that implication from the title.)

It's a charming little gift book. I got mine from my friend Elyse, who happens to be particularly good at picking out gift books. But why would one want a book filled with random facts about and quotes regarding food and its history?

Because then you can know about Russian doll roasts (think turducken). You could begin preparing one of these dishes by stuffing a clove and a caper into an olive, then stuffing that into a bec-figue, then that into an ortolan . . . and so forth, until you've got fifteen or twenty birds stuffed into a turkey, and then finally, into an enormous bustard.

Or: you could be at a baby shower, and mention the idea of these elaborate Russian doll concoctions, and discover that someone else there is familiar with a particular ritual involved in eating ortolan, those tiny little birds, bones and all. That might call to mind for someone else in the conversation Loren Groff's book "Delicate Edible Birds," and, in the end, you will have had a very interesting conversation. Assuming, of course, that the others at the baby shower have an interest in interesting miscellany.

[Karschtl]

This is a book where you read only bits and pieces at a time, which makes it the perfect book for the bathroom.
I skipped some entries, but overall it was quite interesting. I'm just not sure how much of it I will remember.
I was really impressed by one recipe, where you put more than 10 different birds (dead but uncooked) into one another (from very small to larger than a turkey) like little russian babushkas and then put it into the oven for a very very long time. I'm also wondering who really wants to eat this.

[Camille]

Si vous avez déjà lu Les Miscellanées de Ben Schott, vous savez à quoi vous attendre ! Certains articles, qui se trouvaient déjà dans le premier volume, ont été enrichis pour que le lecteur n'ait pas le sentiment de relire la même chose. De la couleur des smarties au menu du banquet servi à l'issue de la première cérémonie de remise des prix Nobel, ce recueil regorge d'informations sur la gastronomie du monde entier.

[Amy]

Oh what a glorious book! Now I shall finally find out the 10 characteristics a perfect cheese must have (crass American that I am, I was just going by taste), what was eaten on JFK's 45th birthday (May 19, 1962- 42 years ago, next week), and why asparagus leaves that distinctive odor when we- umm...use the loo.

Sent to me by Netstation.

[MJ]

A book "of vital irrelavance" dealing with all things ingested. With an attached ribbon it's an easy to mark a page for a moments amusement or to regale friends and family with culinary minutia. A kind of believe it or not for grown ups.

[Kiran]

Great little book filled with drips and drabs of miscellaneous food related trivia. I enjoyed being able to read this in bits and pieces over the course of six months. A fun collection of both historical and current food related odds and ends.

[Noora]

Ihan yhtä hauskoja juttuja sisälläänpitävä kirja kuin ensimmäinenkin Schottin sekalaiset. Kirjan sisältö on samaan aikaan tyhmää ja hauskaa, kiinnostavaa ja ällöttävää, nippelitietoa ja oivalluksia. Kirja, jonka pariin voi palata uudelleen ja lukea pieniä pätkiä kerrallaan.

[Jenne]

Trivia...about food! It's like he wrote it just for me.

[kristy]

random but fun.

[Houari Sabirin]

quite so damn pretty good book to know the other side of what we are facing of everyday... ^^

[Breck]

Even better than the 'Original Miscellany', at least for those who tend toward the epicurean.