Published in 2010
400 pages
Niki Segnit had not so much as peeled a potato until her early twenties, when, almost by accident, she discovered that she loved cooking. Much as she enjoys haute cuisine, she’s not likely to reproduce it at home, preferring to experiment with recipes from domestic kitchens abroad. Her background is in marketing, specialising in food and drink, and she has worked with many famous brands of confectionary, snacks, baby foods, condiments, dairy products, hard liquors and soft drinks. Since summer 2010 she has written a weekly column on food combinations for The Times. She lives in central London with her husband.
What is this book about?
Unique, beautifully written and ceaselessly imaginative, The Flavor Thesaurus is a completely new kind of food book–inspired, as author Niki Segnit explains, by her over-reliance on recipes. “Following the instructions in a recipe is like parroting pre-formed sentences from a phrasebook. Forming an understanding of how flavors work together, on the other hand, is like learning the language: it allows you to express yourself freely, to improvise, to cook a dish the way you want to cook it.”
The Flavor Thesaurus is the inquisitive cook’s guide to acquiring that understanding–to learning the language of flavor. Breaking the vast universe of ingredients down to 99 essential flavors, Segnit suggests classic and less well-known pairings for each, grouping almost 1,000 entries into flavor families like “Green & Grassy,” “Berry & Bush” and “Creamy Fruity.” But The Flavor Thesaurus is much more than just a reference book, seasoning the mix of culinary science, culture and expert knowledge with the author’s own insights and opinions, all presented in her witty, engaging and highly readable style. As appealing to the novice cook as to the experienced professional, The Flavor Thesaurus will not only immeasurably improve your cooking–it’s the sort of book that might keep you up at night reading.
Cooking is an art, like writing or painting, and great cooks are artists. And although the ultimate source of creativity remains elusive, all painters have their color wheel, all writers their vocabulary. And now, in the form of this beautiful, entertaining and exhaustively researched book, cooks have their own collection of essential knowledge: The Flavor Thesaurus.
