Oxford Companions to Food and Wine
Reviews and Critical Acclaim
The Oxford Companion to Food
Awards for The Oxford Companion to Food
- Special Award, André Simon Memorial Fund Book Awards
- 1999 Special Award, Glenfiddich Food & Drink Awards
- 2000 Winner, James Beard Foundation Book Award
- Reference Winner, 2000 IACP Cookbook Awards, for Food Reference and the Jane Grigson Award Winner, Versailles World Cookbook Fair Awards
- "Best Culinary History Book"
Reviews of the first edition:
"This outstanding culinary reference is destined to become a classic, and Davidson, the book's editor and the author of many of its entries, deserves the eternal gratitude of researchers everywhere. Everything from individual ingredients, cooking terms, and prepared dishes to national cuisines and cookbooks and their authors is covered. Each entry is written in a clear, engaging style often seasoned with a dash of wit. Highly recommended.""Library Journal (starred review)
"Very erudite...I've been longing to have enough time to sit down and read the entire thing.""Ruth Reichl, author of Comfort Me with Apples
"No food lover, whether scholarly or civilian, can afford not to own this book.""Vogue
"This massive volume is nothing short of the grandest of SMORGASBORDS, a sumptuous BUFFET with more SAVORIES, ZAKUSKI and SWEETIES than your typical state dinner.... A road map to food with a truly global reach... For serious food historians, this will no doubt become an irreplaceable companion. For those amateurs who are merely fascinated by food and who appreciate lucid and witty writing that seeks to deflate the pretensions of your average gastronome, it will provide hours of amusement.""Elizabeth Gleick, Time Magazine
"A food book for all time. The canon of great food literature just got one fat volume greater.... Destined to be the final word on food and its history, The Companion, as it will surely be known, is a must for any serious food follower.""Gourmet Magazine
"Lives up to the highest expectations. It is a masterly work with a variety of voices... extremely thorough and well written entries, enhanced by cross references and indexes and larded with anecdotes and strong opinions.""Florence Fabricant, The New York Times
"Not a cookbook so much as a cook's book, this long awaited encyclopedia will thrill food fanatics.""People Magazine
"A culinary sine qua non.... This 892 page tour de force will enlighten you as to the history, cultivation, and flavor of every edible you've ever heard of and hundreds more you never even knew existed.""Men's Journal
"Davidson shies from nothing". He draws from 2,000 years of cook books and food writers; examines culinary terms, cooking techniques and food science; probes the use and consumption of exotic vegetables, spices, fungi, game, insects and more. Amateurs and professionals alike will relish this work.""ForeWord
"Magnificent volume.... A highly readable work of reference, one which does not abandon scholarship for colour but somehow manages to imbue all that he quotes with his own spirit.""Independent on Sunday
hspace="10">"The Oxford Companion not just surpasses, but makes look ridiculous its hilariously Franco centric competitor, the Larousse Gastronomique. The amount of work involved is, again, mind boggling.""John Lanchester, author of The Debt to Pleasure, in The Evening Standard
"From the day it was published" it became the one basic reference work of food scholarship, the volume to which we will all turn first whenever we have a question about food historical, cultural, or botanical.... It is undoubtedly the most important encyclopedic volume about food published in our lifetimes.""Vogue
"The 'O.C.F' is so entertainingly written that it's easy to forget it's a work of true scholarship.""The New York Times Magazine
