From the foreword:

”Contrary to popular belief, even well trained chefs use cookbooks. (Even those chefs who write cookbooks use cookbooks.) I's simply impossible, especially for young chefs with little experience, to remember how to do everything That's why most restaurant offices have a cookbook shelf, and many of those cookbook shelves contain a copy of Jim Peterson's Sauces.

It's the single contemporary reference on the subject that is both comprehensive and comprehensible. I love Jim's recipes (and there are gems all over the place here, but what's special about Sauces is the text: It reads so well that this is the kind of book you can take to bed. His explanations of liaisons, glaces, fla-vorings, and cooking methods are clear and concise, and his historical survey of sauces alone is worth the price of admission.

Cookbooks are not often revised after such a short period of time (the original edition is a mere seven years old, but reworking Sauces was a good idea on Jim's part. If there were complaints about the original edition, they didn't come from old-style French chefs. One could not ask for a more complete survey of classic French sauce making. From a basic béchamel to red-wine meat jelly, it was all there. But despite its range, the book was missing a demi-world of sauces those from the great cuisines outside of France.

Fortunately, the 90s is exactly the time to see and correct those omissions.

Although Jim has rewritten his original book, corrected a few of the inevitable errors, added some detail where it might have been needed, trimmed a bit where there may have been excesses, the real value in this new edition is in its addi-tions, which improve an already great work. The photographs will prove invalu-able, especially to the home cook who, as Jim says, does not get the opportunity to learn, as he did, in the presence of a master; and the glossary section has been expanded, which will made the book even more accessible to the amateur. 

But most important are the additions of chapters on Italian and Asian sauce making. It's amazing that just ten years ago, when Jim began work on Sauces, Italian food was just beginning to make its seismic impact felt upon the cooking of America. Iwenty years ago we were talking about "spaghetti and meatballs." Now entire cookbooks, dozens of them, have been devoted to pasta, or to regions of Italy of which few Americans were even aware. Jim provides us with a quick, efficient survey of sauces for pasta, as well as guidelines for making an unlimited

number of others.

Asian food has not swept the nation in quite the same way, but Asian flavors are now everywhere, and even many chefs, as Jim notes "are perplexed when confronted with an Asian sauce recipe." Many of the principles of Asian cooking, including sauce making, run contrary to those of European cooking, and here Jim's efficient survey of the Asian field serves as a wonderful introduction to these differences and to the basics of cooking with Asian ingredients.

My guess is that the revised edition of Sauces will outlive its predecessor by many years. But who knows? There may be some important cuisines hiding in remote corners of the world; when their secret sauces must be revealed, Jim will undoubtedly revise once again.

Mark Bittman

Woodbridge, Connecticut

Fall 1997”