Cookbook review 1 (Hanyu Zhang)

Cookbook 1 (The cooking of Vienna's Empire)

As I was swimming through the mountain of books in the library, one book immediately caught my attention. It had a beautiful picture of a very delicious looking cake on the front cover and I wanted to flip the pages and see what other great food recipes it contained.

On opening the book, I was surprised by the heading right away. It was called The cooking of Vienna's Empire. It had an impact on me because I would most usually relate an empire to country and war, not food.

The introductory pages of the book contained a short story about the significance and difference of food in Austria and Hungary. I think that this helped the writer establish authority because they seemed to know a great deal of knowledge of food and its history.

As I began reading this cook book, I noticed that there are a lot of pictures showing culture and people. Many of the pictures were those of the Austrian province where food was one of their highlights. There were also numerous pictures of tasty looking ice-creams, pastries and soups.

On the recipe pages, the cooking instructions are given on the right or left side of the page. This helped divide the book into two columns and I found this a very interesting and effective way of organizing the book. The instructions were very easy to read and follow and every step was broken down to minute detail so that even a beginner at cooking could do it.

I observed that after every few recipes, the author would write a little more of the history of food in Austria-Hungary. I believe that this is done to bring variety and keep the reader interested.