Patricia Rain

While I enjoyed learning more about vanilla, this was a somewhat frustrating read. For one thing, I think this book is in dire need of a copyeditor. I found it rather disorganized and there were several sections that did not seem to follow from anything previously discussed. There were also portions containing a great deal of extraneous information. And there were multiple sentences that simply made no sense scattered throughout, and every time I came across one it drove me to distraction. This book also lacked an index, which made it almost impossible to refer to previously provided information when necessary. I had no idea how much I appreciated indices before this.

Including the recipes was a great idea, but it would have been even better if more of them had been linked more closely to the text. For example, during a discussion of Tahitian vanilla, the text said that since fresh fish is a dietary staple in Tahiti, almost everyone had a recipe for mahi-mahi in vanilla cream sauce. But the recipe that immediately followed this section was not for mahi-mahi in vanilla cream sauce but for papaya chicken, which was not previously discussed at all. The last chapter was devoted to a variety of vanilla recipes and was interesting because it showed some of the savory applications of vanilla (an aspect I did not think much of at all before).

And if you can get past its weaknesses, you can extract (pun intended) a great deal of information from this book, which is why it's getting a higher rating than I would otherwise give.… (meer)

While I enjoyed learning more about vanilla, this was a somewhat frustrating read. For one thing, I think this book is in dire need of a copyeditor. I found it rather disorganized and there were several sections that did not seem to follow from anything previously discussed. There were also portions containing a great deal of extraneous information. And there were multiple sentences that simply made no sense scattered throughout, and every time I came across one it drove me to distraction. This book also lacked an index, which made it almost impossible to refer to previously provided information when necessary. I had no idea how much I appreciated indices before this.

Including the recipes was a great idea, but it would have been even better if more of them had been linked more closely to the text. For example, during a discussion of Tahitian vanilla, the text said that since fresh fish is a dietary staple in Tahiti, almost everyone had a recipe for mahi-mahi in vanilla cream sauce. But the recipe that immediately followed this section was not for mahi-mahi in vanilla cream sauce but for papaya chicken, which was not previously discussed at all. The last chapter was devoted to a variety of vanilla recipes and was interesting because it showed some of the savory applications of vanilla (an aspect I did not think much of at all before).

And if you can get past its weaknesses, you can extract (pun intended) a great deal of information from this book, which is why it's getting a higher rating than I would otherwise give.… (meer)