Book description
As well as being the author of
The Three Musketeers
, Alexandre Dumas was also an enthusiastic gourmand and expert cook. His
Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine
, published in 1873, is an encyclopaedic collection of ingredients,
recipes and anecdotes, from Absinthe to Zest via cake, frogs' legs,
oysters, Roquefort and vanilla. Included here are recipes for bamboo
pickle and strawberry omelette, advice on cooking all manner of beast
from bear to kangaroo brought together in a witty and gloriously
eccentric culinary compendium.
Author of The Count of Monte
Cristo and The Three Musketeers,
Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a prolific writer who also
wrote plays, short stories, published essays, magazine articles and
reportage. In addition to this he was an expert cook and great
traveller, whose cosmopolitan outlook is reflected in The Great
Dictionary of Cuisine, first published posthumously in 1873.
Alan Davidson (1924 - 2003) was a distinguished author and
publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish. In 1999
he compiled the immensely successful Companion to Food,
available in Penguin. Alan and his wife, Jane's (1927-2010)
translation of Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was
first published by the Folio Society.
