OP: Grand Livre De Cuisine: Alain Ducasse's Culinary Encyclopedia
De Gusttibus, 2004. Hardcover. Fine. First printing.
Alain Ducasse (1956– ) is a name very familiar to Kitchen Arts and Letters customers. With dozens of restaurants around the world, a combined total of 21 Michelin stars among them, several of his own cookbooks, and even more published under his imprint, Ducasse Editions, this French-born chef is indeed a brand.
Of the vast number of publications that bear the chef’s name, Ducasse may be best known for an early 2000s series of silver-jacketed, massive tomes titled Grand Livre de Cuisine. The first volume, published in French in 2001, encompassed fine, contemporary French cooking. The first English printing, which we offer here, was issued in 2004.
Chef Jean-François Piège (1970– ) provides over 1000 pages of recipes, alphabetical by ingredient from acacia blossom fritters to mashed piena de Napoli zucchini. All are composed dishes which presuppose a fair amount of culinary expertise.
As Jean-François Revel of the Académie Française says in his introduction, “By imitating the masters, one cannot of course reach their level of perfection, but one often escapes the routine of one’s own banality.” And there is little room here to find any boredom.
The book was issued in two formats, an impressively large (12” x 9.5” x 3.25”) edition with a ribbon marker and jacket, and a compressed version with all the same content but smaller type, no jacket or ribbon. We offer the former here. This is one of our most highly sought titles, and we are pleased to offer a Fine copy, appearing as new except for some fraying of the marker ribbon.
