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A few months ago I took over cooking chores in my family. One of the things I missed was a comprehensive reference which was easy to use. No longer. Covering everything from Aardvark to Zucchini, this book has become indispensable. The entries are not only informative, but are written in plain English, so you don't have to be up on the latest cooking jargon to understand what you're reading. If you need more information, the book has a far-ranging Bibliography. One note: The "Index" really isn't one. It's a translation table you can check if the item you're looking for isn't in the alphabetical listing.

Enjoy this book. It's fun to just dip into and read randomly as well as a useful kitchen appliance.

SEE PREVIOUS REVIEW If you look up 'Taco' in the index (try the back of the book), you will be guided to look under 'Tortilla' where you will find the following entry - "A taco, in Mexico is a fresh tortilla rolled around mashed beans, shredded meat and sauce. It can be lightly fried after filling, and is eaten as a snack or appetiser. In the TEX-MEX cuisine of the USA, a taco denotes a tortilla bent in half, deep fried to give a U shape, and filled with minced beef, shredded lettuce, and grated cheese." - Pretty comprehensive I would say. But frankly, if it's 'Taco' you want to look up, then this is not really the book for you. However, if you need to know about Mamee or Mangosteen or Megapode or Merguez or even Mediaeval Cuisine, just to mention some Ms, then buy the book and buy it quick. It's a great book and of interest to - well not quite every one, but any one who likes and knows about food, which may well include some "older British upper-crusty types"!

The Pengiun Companion (in its hardcover original the Oxford Companion to Food) runs more than a thousand pages and contains more than 2500 entries on every plant and animal product, every cooking tradition and technique, of any relevance to the well-schooled cook. It is universal in its scope, yet at the same time, how can I put this, British. A team of eminent culinary scholars put this one together. Now I know you're wondering, before anything else, if the flightless bird of the Antarctic itself is edible. The answer is, with some reservations, yes. The book's 500-word entry on its namesake ingredient shows at once the usual detail and characteristic humor of the Companion's approach. We are told that we are often reminded of the penguin by the paperback edition of a book or by "observing at social functions those few Englishmen who still dress up to look like waiters or penguins-it is never clear which." The problem with the technically edible penguin is that it eats only fish and hence tastes strongly like its diet. The penguin is most important in the food chain for the guano it leaves as waste, an excellent fertilizer. South Africans eat the eggs of some species of penguins.

British foods-"Yorkshire Pudding," "Cheshire Cheese," Scottish Haggis," and scores of others less known to us-get thorough treatments of course, but so do foods from all over the globe. One need only look at the companions to the "Penguin" entry in the Penguin Companion to learn something new about two quintessentially American food traditions. Move one up alphabetically from "Penguin" and you learn the essence of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking: the "interplay of sweet flavors against salty ones," sweet apples, for instance, combined with salty ham. The entry covers the usual explanation that the Pennsylvania Dutch aren't really Dutch at all; "Dutch" was originally a term used in America to refer to people who spoke German, a corruption, perhaps, of "Deutsch." Move one entry down from "Penguin" and you get a thorough entry on "Pemmican," the product of hardened preserved meat associated with native North Americans. The word, it seems, is derived from the Cree pimiy, meaning "grease." I've always known that small berries were added to a dried meat and fat mixture to make pemmican, but the Companion postulates a reason: the berries contain benzoic acid, a natural preservative, which inhibits bacterial growth. Skip up slightly and you get a full page on the important spice "Pepper." Move back a few and you get the full story on "Peking Duck." It's all here in exhaustive detail.

Not everyone is as insane as I was to read every entry, every page, but this masterpiece is truly a good companion. I'm still looking for another book to occupy me so thoroughly, for so long.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com