Book Review: The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook

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Book Review: The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook

Unread postby bourbonv » Fri May 07, 2010 9:59 am

The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook, by Albert W.A. Schmid. University Press of Kentucky, 2010, Contents, Foreword, Appendix, Notes, Bibliography, Index, Illustrated, pp. 139.

Albert Schmid is an instructor in culinary arts at Sullivan Unversity - an institution that is well respected for its culinary program. Schmid use many different cookbooks as sources for his own book, so this is not just a collection of hism own recipes, but recipes from many different source. That is good in that it leads to a variety of food styles. It would have been better if he had used source other than cookbooks because then he might have gotten the definition of bourbon correct. He made not one, but two errors in defining bourbon: there is no upper percentage to corn or minimum amount of aging reqired for it to be bourbon.

Despite The flaws in research for the technical definition of bourbon, Schmid has done an excellent job with the recipes. After all, this is a cookbook and not a distillers guide. Schmid starts by giving some cocktail recipes. They are all pretty simple cocktails and many are the traditional bourbon cocktails. He then splits the recipes by season starting with "Winter" and followed by "Spring", Summer", and "Fall". "Winter" recipes are guided towards the holiday season, with "Spring" having Derby inspired foods, "Summer" focusing upon grilling and outdoor cooking and "Fall" looking at foods for your Thanksgiving feast. The recipes are for all courses from salads to desserts. For example, the bourbon hot dogs (p.47) are easily made and quite tastey.

The book is well designed with a section in the middle of the book with color photographs of many of the dishes. It is indexed to make finding individual recipes easy and he does list his sources for those wishing to add to their bourbon cookbook collection. It is a very complete Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook.

This book is a good addition to your bourbon whiskey library. Bourbon can be enjoyed on many levels and this book will help you take bourbon out of the bar and into the kitchen. Schmid does get the definition of bourbon wrong, but he definitely knows what to do with bourbon in the kitchen, so his mistake can be forgiven. Add this book to your collection and serve Kentucky Bourbon Prawns at your next Derby party.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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bourbonv
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Re: Book Review: The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook

Unread postby bourbonv » Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:36 am

I was at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest on Saturday and Albert mentioned that they have changed the dust cover and it now has a quote from this review I did with bourbonentusiast.com as the media. I guess people do read these reviews after all.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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bourbonv
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Posts: 4086
Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:17 pm
Location: Louisville, Ky.


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