The German Cookbook

This book makes number 28 of German cookbooks in my collection

Pros:
- Definitely the broadest English print German cookbook available, in terms of recognizing regional specialties, many of which are lesser known, especially in America
- The formatting of the recipes themselves is the gold standard. Every recipe has the cooking/resting/prep/etc times, quantities, and ingredients clearly labeled
- Includes both imperial and metric units for every ingredient. I mostly use metric but admittedly struggle divorcing myself from my measuring spoons
- The end of the book includes cooks notes and a glossary. The notes are helpful in understanding the recipes (honestly should have been put at the front of the book)
- Nearly all ingredients should be readily available, with the exception of certain offal cuts and some select items which may require extra effort to source.

Cons:
- No German dish titles! Frankly infuriating as it makes it exceedingly difficult to search for pictures and alternate recipes online, let alone cross referencing between cookbooks. A very select few dishes have their real names, typically the regional specialties
- No context. Aside from a few pages at the beginning, recipes have ZERO context given outside of generic region labels. This is a stark contrast to other Phaidon compendiums like the Nordic cookbook that offer historical and social context for dishes. Only a few recipes give pairing suggestions for sides
- Cryptic photography. The photos are fairly good, but they are unlabeled. You can usually surmise that a photo belongs to a recipe on the opposite page, but in several of them that is definitely not the case. Most dishes have no photos, which when paired with the lack of an official name makes things difficult.

Neutral:
- This book is NOT FOR BEGINNERS. Recipes assume a moderate level of competency from the reader. I don’t personally see that as a bad thing, but potential buyers should consider this
- The chef author is based in Bavaria, and the book certainly feels slightly biased towards Bavarian and neighboring regions’ dishes. This isn’t necessarily bad, as all the regions receive adequate coverage, and Bavarian/southern German dishes are typically better known abroad, I fpersonally feel. They southern bound tilt also means some coverage of Germanic Austrian and Swiss recipes that might not get covered otherwise.
- The chef is a multi Michelin starred expert, and you can sense that many of the recipes are more technical than a typical German home cook would do (my Oma included)
- Some ingredients seem oddly specific. For instance most recipes specify celeriac where most would probably do celery, or confectioners sugar where regular would do. Other recipes call for celery stalks or caster sugar, so it’s clear that it’s intentional.

Rating:
For collectors: 5/5, it’s phaidon
For beginners: 1/5, it’s not for you
For pros: 4/5, recipes are suited for the more technically minded cooks

I realize that it's impossible to include everything readers are looking for but I felt that significant omissions were made in this cookbook billed as a 'Comprehensive Collection of German Recipes'. The book itself warrants 4 or 5 stars but I was really excited about a few things that ended up being excluded and that is the reason I only gave it three stars.

1. There is no section devoted to German Bread (Bauernbrot). There is a section on Desserts and Sweetbreads and a single recipe for pretzles (laugenbrezel) but I would have expected at least a few recipes of traditional bread and/or Brötchen.
2. Nearly every recipe involving sausage involves using ready-made sausage. I realize that making sausage is intensive but I expected to see a few recipes for common wursts/sausages in this text. This was important to me because where I live it is very difficult to get authentic German staples and the author stressed that the reason for the book was that they were unable to find 'Comprehensive or Comparable' book on German food in their professional experience.
3. No Lebkuchen or Pfeffernusse, or roasted nuts - just disappointed, being from Bayern, those recipes were important to me and feel like standards.

*There are a few typos in the index
Brotchen is listed on page 7 but that is just a page with a picture, I didn't ever see an actual Brotchen recipe (if someone finds one, please reply to this review!)
Nurnberg sausages with sauerkraut in a bun is listed on page 36 but it's really on page 38 (recipe is actually for sauerkraut accompaniment - you need to buy the Nurnberg Sausage ready made)

Like I said, no one book is going to make everyone happy and this book certainly represents a wealth of knowledge, love for German food and a much appreciated attempt to fill a void. Obviously any of the things I was looking for can be found online but I trusted that this book would give me genuine, traditional recipes for these things and they just weren't there. I just wanted to let people know in case these things were important to them.

So incredibly disappointing. First 4 recipes from childhood (military fam) not here. Guess there is a reason there is no look inside option.

Looked for brotchen, carrot salad, cucumber with dill (not sour cream) salad, cold red cabbage salad and rump steak. Grew up there in early 70s. None of these recipes exist at least by the American names (where are the German names??)

Not really motivated to read the rest.

30 some $ wasted.

This book is great! My wife just surprised me with it as a gift. It fits in perfectly with my large collection of cookbooks. The recipes are written out in a way that is very easy to understand and the food photos bring me back to grandma’s table. This book is only second to the Nordic cookbook.

There are a number of recipes I found in the book which replicate the food I eat when visiting relatives in Germany. So the recipes appear to be very authentic. The problem is that the names are not given in German. So if you know a dish by it’s German name, you may have a hard time finding it in this book - even though the recipe is there. .

Being of German origin, I remember my mother and grandmother doing a lot of German cooking. I remember the food but not how it was made or the ingredients. This book contains everything I remember plus a lot more great food combinations. Can't wait to try many items in this book.

Alfons Schuhbeck has had cooking shows on German TV for years, but unlike some celebrity chefs, come up through the ranks mastering classic cuisine - German/Bavarian and French along the way. Search for almost any ingredient and you'll find a preparation. Recipes are well written, clearly described with both US and Metric measures. He seems to like using 10X sugar to quickly caramelize meats and vegetables and whole cumin seeds, which I never realized was a staple of the German kitchen. More a text than a glossy picture book, it's a good addition to your library if you need a go-to reference source.

I love this book so much I lugged it to the US from Australia when I moved three weeks ago. I could only take 5 books of the 200 I had at home, and this was one of them.

What I loved:
- great balance of images and recipes - I prefer books with more recipes than photos
- the meatloaf is incredible (I’ve made it three times in the past month)
- generally beautiful book (aren’t they all)
- I’m so grateful for the diversity of recipes, too many German cookbooks limit themselves to pork knuckle, schnitzel, apple strudel (I.e. German/ Bavarian beer cafe chain menus). I got exactly what I wanted, a collection of classics, well known, regional and family recipes. I feel like I can learn a bit more about German food from this book than others I have read. German food is often thought of as ‘heavy’ and carb rich in Australia due to the limited pub menus of German themed food chains (and lack of German family owned restaurants) — These recipes changed my family members perception of German food :)
- I’m so glad there is a Quark strudel recipe - Aldi have stopped selling my favourite strudel (Quark and rum soaked raisins), so now I can just make it.
-metric and imperial measurements, I used it in Australia, and now I can use it in the US
- easy to find ingredients

Cons:
- I hoped it would have a bread section — or at least I hope Phaidon makes a German baking book with LOTS of brotchen recipes
- images not labelled so you need to know what they are (images are decorative in this capacity, not a guide to what it looks like)
- if you like/need images to guide you on what the end result is, these books (phaidon in general) are probably not for you. Sometimes they can be a bit ‘pick your own adventure’ which I personally like, but have many friends who would feel anxious — it’s a shame the German names aren’t included, this would help people who need images enormously by enabling them to google them.
- not many of the titles have German titles. I love learning languages & would have liked translations. I think Phaidon should make a small dual language dictionary in each of these books, it would be an incredible resource for language learners and people who are just curious / or why not make dual language editions?

It’s absolutely the MUST HAVE German cookbook that needs to be in everyone’s collection. Reminds me a lot of the foods I’ve grown up eating since I was such a little boy. Thus far I’ve made 7 dishes out of this cookbook and look forward to make many many more. And the photographs are absolutely spot on. Love how it tells where bouts the recipes originated from for example Bravaria, Brandenburg, just to name 2 places.

I'm told by a German co-worker that the author is a famous chef. My co-worker commented that the author really liked nutmeg. Looking at the cookbook, the author really likes nutmeg and celeriac. I don't really know much about German food other than schnitzel is delicious, but my co-worker thought it was an acceptable book. Pretty much everything has nutmeg in it. And lots of celeriac.