Classic Austrian Cooking

Rating:
Summary: Gretel Beer's Austrian Cooking g
Review: This book is a classic in its area. There are not (in my experience) a lot of books about Austrian cooking. Often, indiginous Austrian dishes like the well-known Wiener Schnitzel get lumped into books about German or Hungarian cooking. Not that there isn't any resemblance, but the Austrian aspect gets ignored. Beer's book goes a long way at remedying this. The book has the classic, well-known recipies, plus others that are less well known. For example, a tasty lentil soup makes a good vegetarian entree. And there are others as well. The biggest problem I found with using the book is that there are too few pictures to show what you are making is supposed to look like. If you follow the directions as written, chances are what you make will look at least marginally like you'll find in the pictures included, but the shots are too few and all sandwiched in the middle. That being said, I can vouch for the authenticity of the recipies. My mom was from Austria, and learned to cook from her grandmother, who had been a cook for a family of the Austrian nobility in the Habsburg days. Well, mom keeps my copy of this book at her house and uses it quite often. Many of the dishes she knows by heart, but it says a lot for the recipe's authenticity when my mom trusts it enough to use for her own cooking!

Rating:
Summary: Gretel Beer's Austrian Cooking g
Review: This book is a classic in its area. There are not (in my experience) a lot of books about Austrian cooking. Often, indiginous Austrian dishes like the well-known Wiener Schnitzel get lumped into books about German or Hungarian cooking. Not that there isn't any resemblance, but the Austrian aspect gets ignored. Beer's book goes a long way at remedying this. The book has the classic, well-known recipies, plus others that are less well known. For example, a tasty lentil soup makes a good vegetarian entree. And there are others as well. The biggest problem I found with using the book is that there are too few pictures to show what you are making is supposed to look like. If you follow the directions as written, chances are what you make will look at least marginally like you'll find in the pictures included, but the shots are too few and all sandwiched in the middle. That being said, I can vouch for the authenticity of the recipies. My mom was from Austria, and learned to cook from her grandmother, who had been a cook for a family of the Austrian nobility in the Habsburg days. Well, mom keeps my copy of this book at her house and uses it quite often. Many of the dishes she knows by heart, but it says a lot for the recipe's authenticity when my mom trusts it enough to use for her own cooking!

Rating:
Summary: Not the Most Engaging of Cookbooks
Review: This is update of a 1954 cookbook, with ingredients brought up to date with supply and some techniques also caught up with modern equipment. The cake war, as author calls it, is also updated.

I agree with another reviewer who thought photos would have enhanced this, as they do all cookbooks. It certainly inspires one trying it after seeing it prepared and presented.

Rating:
Summary: Not the Most Engaging of Cookbooks
Review: This is update of a 1954 cookbook, with ingredients brought up to date with supply and some techniques also caught up with modern equipment. The cake war, as author calls it, is also updated.

I agree with another reviewer who thought photos would have enhanced this, as they do all cookbooks. It certainly inspires one trying it after seeing it prepared and presented.