The German Cookbook : A Complete Guide to Mastering Authentic German Cooking

Rating:
Summary: Two German Cookbooks Compared. This one wins!
Review: `The German Cookbook' by Mimi Sheraton and `The New German Cookbook' by Jean Anderson and Hedy Wurz are both written by leading American culinary writers. Although their publication dates are separated by thirty years, Ms. Sheraton's earlier book has been brought up to date at almost exactly the same time the newer book was published by Ms. Anderson and her co-author.

The raw numbers put Ms. Anderson at about 390 pages of recipes for a list price of $30 and Ms. Sheraton at about 500 pages of recipes for a list price of $35. Ms. Anderson includes an excellent bibliography of both English and German sources, including a reference to Ms. Sheraton's book. Ms. Sheraton has no bibliography, but includes the excellent feature of an English and a German index. Ms. Anderson includes a very nice glossary of German culinary terms. Ms. Sheraton's list of terms is much shorter, at the end of a short chapter on cooking utensils, which looks almost identical to such a section you would find in a good book on French recipes. In fact, it has a lot of similarities to a much more complete section in Julia Child's landmark `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' which appeared just a few years before Ms. Sheraton's book. While my primary objective is to compare the two German books, I will say at this point that neither comes close to matching the quality of Ms. Child's classic.

Ms. Sheraton, with the longer book, is claiming to be a complete guide to mastering authentic German cooking while Ms. Anderson specifically aims her book at `new' German cooking and avoids any claim to being a survey of all German cuisine (Ms. Sheraton does say, here and there, that there are some typical recipes which are simply so starchy and plain that she thinks they will be of no interest to American cooks, so she leaves them out). A quick look at the first few chapters confirms this assessment. In appetizers, Ms. Sheraton has 18 recipes while Ms. Anderson has but 10. In the next chapter on soups, Ms. Sheraton has 38 recipes while Ms. Anderson has but 25. And, Ms. Sheraton follows her soup chapter with a chapter on soup garnishes.

Which of these two books one may wish to buy has a lot to do with what you want from a `German cookbook'. I happen to be from a German and Pennsylvania German background, so I am looking for a wide variety of recipes for classic German and Austrian dishes. For this, I certainly prefer Ms. Sheraton's more complete coverage. I think the most typical buyer may be interested in a few famous German / Austrian recipes such as Sauerbraten, Sauerkraut, Spatzle, Wiener Schnitzel, Sausage dishes, and Strudel (It is entirely coincidental that all of these dishes start with an `S'). A comparison of all these dishes in both books shows that in every case, not only does Ms. Sheraton have more recipes, her recipes are also more complete.

One place where this is most dramatic is in the recipes for strudel. Ms. Anderson gives but one recipe for strudel, calling it a `Bavarian Strudel', and accurately stating that it is less like the classic Austro-Hungarian dish than like a cobbler. And, rather than giving a homemade recipe for the dough, Ms. Anderson's recipe uses frozen filo dough. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, as long as you are not buying her book to get a good classic strudel dough recipe. Ms. Sheraton does give us a full recipe for the classic Austrian strudel dough plus recipes for apple, cheese, cherry, plum, poppy seed, rhubarb, and Tyrolean strudel. Everything but cabbage strudel (however, there is a sauerkraut strudel recipe under sauerkraut recipes)! With sausage dishes, the picture is similar. Ms. Anderson has but three sausage dishes while Ms. Sheraton gives us ten.

Ms. Sheraton's recipes do tend to be just a bit more concise than those in Ms. Anderson's book. This is understandable since Ms. Sheraton says at the outset that her book assumes you know your way around the kitchen and know in practical terms, the difference between blanch and poach, for example. And yet, with very important recipes such as with sauerbraten and spatzle, two dishes which require considerably more than the average amount of technique, Ms. Sheraton's recipes are more descriptive than those from Ms. Anderson.

It is entirely appropriate that Ms. Anderson's co-author is a German travel writer, as one of the things in `The New German Cookbook' which is missing from `The German Cookbook' are sidebar stories describing the origins of most recipes.

The bottom line for all of this for Ms. Anderson's book is that it is very similar to a cookbook of recipes from a popular modern German restaurant. And, restaurant cookbooks are bought primarily to supply the reader with new ways of doing classic dishes and cute stories of how the executive chef came by the recipes. The main difference is that unlike recipes from great French and Italian restaurants, the recipes in Anderson's book are primarily simplified versions of the classics rather than fancy new twists.

Really want good recipes from the authentic, traditional German cuisine, get Ms. Sheraton's book. If you are so devoted to German recipes that Sheraton's book simply does not supply enough variety, get both books. Both books give good sketches of wine and beer production in Germany and there is little redundancy. Ms. Sheraton adds the extra touches of recipes for wine and beer based drinks and punches.

Ms. Sheraton's book is a reasonable addition for German cuisine to the great one volume treatments of ethnic cuisines done by Diane Kochilas on Greece, Diana Kennedy or Rick Bayless on Mexico, Penelope Casas on Spain, Barbara Tropp or Virginia Lee on China, Shizuo Tsuji on Japan, and Jean Anderson on Portugal!

Recommended as a standard on its subject.