Classic Home Desserts: A Treasury of Heirloom and Contemporary Recipes Frm Around the World - Hardcover

Sax, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1881527522 ISBN 13: 9781881527527

Publisher: Chapters Pub Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

A delectable collection of old-fashioned, mouth-watering deserts, updated for today's tastes, also includes profiles of the various chefs, their recollections of favorite desserts, and excerpts from literature related to everyone's favorite meal. IP.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Sax was a prolific cooking writer, cookbook author, chef, teacher, and humanitarian activist until his death in 1995. He received a James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

From the Inside Flap

No fancy concoction by a pastry chef can match the direct appeal of a dessert made by a good home cook, whether a berry cobbler, a lemon meringue pie, a sour-cream cheesecake or a bowl of freshly churned ice cream.

For the better part of a decade, Richard Sax has searched out 350 of the most treasured home desserts from around the globe. The result is the most comprehensive collection of its kind yet assembled.

'These are the desserts made at home by mothers and grandmothers rather than by professional pastry chefs,' Sax writes. 'Those included are only the best in each category-the things you can bring to your table with confidence, knowing they will be eaten to the last crumb.'

Every dessert you've ever wanted to make is here:
--Fruit cobblers, crisps and compotes
--Puddings, creams and souffls
--Pies and tarts of every description
--Sauces and ice creams
--Simple pastries
--Plain cakes, fancy cakes and coffee cakes

Recipes include: Southern-Style Peach and Raspberry Cobbler, Frozen Cappuccino, New Orleans Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce, The World's Best Lemon Tart, Claremont Diner Coconut Cream Pie and Schrafft's Hot Fudge Sauce.

Although many of the recipes are delightfully old-fashioned, Sax has put his own innovative touches on others without compromising their ease or authenticity, adding a little fresh ginger to a plum crisp, or white chocolate to a banana cream pie.

But this is far more than a collection of recipes. Profiles of cooks and their recollections, essays on the evolution of classic desserts, and literary quotations make this as much a valuable historical and cultural exploration as a cookbook.

Also includes:
--Tips on how to avoid common mistakes in dessert-making
--A glossary of essential baking equipment, cookware and gadgets
--48 full-color photographs by noted photographer Alan Richardson

Reviews

More than a decade in the making, according to Sax (Old-Fashioned Desserts), this vast and user-friendly international compendium of desserts will seem congenial territory to the many home cooks whose culinary passion has always been that final course. Sax eschews such special-occasion masterpieces as wedding cakes and complicated pastries, to survey four broad types of desserts: warm fruit desserts and smooth, thickened dishes, like mousses and fools; custards and starch-thickened puddings; baked goods (about half the book), from cookies to cakes, pies and tarts; and frozen desserts and sauces. Beginning with thorough coverage of cookware and ingredients, including sources, tips on techniques and a table of equivalents, Sax plunges right into the fruit recipes. They, like all others, come with a bit of history, suggestions about variations and substitutions and sidebars of chatty quotes from noted chefs, excerpts from fiction and historical documents or reproductions of early recipes. Sax offers a highly usable collection sure to brighten the task of family cooks and bring smiles to those who sit at their tables. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sax, a well-known food writer and cookbook author, has compiled an ambitious and impressive collection of homestyle desserts, from cobblers and crisps to creams and fools to layer cakes, fancy cakes, and cheesecakes. Many of the recipes come from old cookbooks, some centuries old, and from family collections handed down through generations, while others are Sax's own versions of classics. There are also recipes from pastry chefs who have revived these traditional desserts and from home cooks who have rediscovered them-or have been making them for decades. Most collections of good old-fashioned desserts are on a much smaller scale; with more than 300 recipes, an excellent introductory section, and lots of culinary history and background, Sax's nostalgic compendium is highly recommended. [HomeStyle Bks. main selection.]
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Invariably, at least one person in every library will find fault with food-magazine columnist Sax's worldwide compendium of sweets, past and present. Where's the rugelah? How about bananas Foster? Yet, with phenomenal energy devoted to research and a sense of taste, Sax has produced a scholarly and mouthwatering collection of desserts that becomes a reference in itself. All 350 recipes (many lightened in calorie and fat content), a mound of intriguing sidebars, and insider tips and techniques lead to one satisfying conclusion--that perhaps the end of the meal should be the beginning. Barbara Jacobs

Edition details

• Publisher: Chapters Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1881527522
• ISBN 13: 9781881527527
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 688