Eating Your Words: 2000 Words To Tease Your Taste Buds

Rating:
Summary: Articles = great, definitions = very poor
Review: You have to ask yourself, "Why did William Grimes think there was the need for another culinary dictionary?". As you read the book, the answer comes quickly, before you're even very far into the "A's"... apparently he didn't.
I was repeatedly disappointed by the cursory, often puerile definitions which accompany most of the 2000 culinary terms Grimes presents. The simplistic line or two of text each are accompanied by are often incomplete and sometimes down right misleading.
The introduction builds up the book as a necessary tool to help we little folk through the growing complexities of modern food buying and eating. In a world no longer dominated by a few French terms we are led to believe that this book will bridge the gap between old-school cooking books (say, from before 1990) and the current state of culinaria. Why then are so many of the terms defined in an out-dated, even archaic mind-set?
Take the term "brown sugar". This book says it is "unrefined or partially refined sugar", a definition all well and good perhaps 200 years ago. Today brown sugar is almost always made from refined sugar with a special molasses syrup and colorings added back to it - a very different thing indeed, and Grimes should know the difference. The are innumerable other examples available in the same vein.
Additionally, Grimes give us "food lists" scattered periodically throughout the book but provides only sporadic support for the words used in them. For example, there is a list of Varieties of Apples. 48 varieties are listed but when one wants more information on them it is often lacking. Sure "Red Delicious" apples have an insipid definition in the "R" section but what about the more interesting varieties like "Sundowner", or "Lodi" apples? No further mention of them can be found in the book. There is also a huge list of "Fish and Seafood" but if you are intrigued by what the "Geoduck" or "Sprat" listed might be, you're out of luck (without running to a REAL culinary dictionary).
The bright (if limited) spots in the book are the articles on food etymology and history. There are 7 of them (reprints from other publications and various authors) that are each informative and interesting. Grimes would have done much better to have put together a collection of these little insightful gems and left the definitions to those more inspired by the subject.
My guess is that the brevity of the definitions (leading to rampant deficiencies) was, perhaps, an attempt at simplicity but the effective "dumbing-down" of the book is insulting to anything but the most elementary reader. I know that Grimes, a former restaurant reviewer for the New York Times, must know a lot more about food than this book makes him sound. Grimes is listed as the "editor" of this work (along with a number of others) and it defies logic why he would allow his name used as the primary.
Unfortunately, my copy of this book is destined for "re-gifting" or a permanent place on a dusty shelf somewhere while my venerable, dog-eared Larousse Gastronomic retains it's place of honor near my desk.
Bon appetite, ex libris, and caveat emptor. DH