THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL

Good Books For Cooks

by Fred Thomas

Chocolate Butterflies & Marzipan Pigs

This Month's Recipe: Bo Friberg's Tiramisu

EXAMINE ANY RICHLY STOCKED cookbook library and chances are you'll spot but a handful of pastry books. If you find any at all, they'll most likely include one or two of Maida Heatter's issues, of which Pies & Tarts, her Bible, will be prominent; Marcel Desaulniers' fine and so-hip Death By Chocolate will occupy a bit of space, and perhaps Perfect Pastry by Nick Malgieri. Those books, as good as they are, pale in comparison to the spectacular The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg.

This book sits on my desk now. It weighs a half-ounce short of six and a half pounds; its 1,180 pages -- oversized at 11 by 9.5 inches -- are onion-skin thin to keep it a mere 2.5 inches thick at the spine. This is not just a cookbook about the pastry arts, it is publishing history, as important a culinary work as, say, Larousse Gastronomique or Basic French Cooking by the passionate chef at the Paris Ritz, the late Louis Diat.

This is the third edition of this text (1995). The publisher, John Wiley & Sons under the auspices of The Culinary Institute of America (or CIA, as the school is known), has spared little expense on a book that goes for the price of tenderloin on a good day, about nine bucks a pound, $59.95 retail, with lavishly stitched binding and color on heavy pages slippery with blue clay coating. Those color pages are, in the old-values style of bygone publishers, printed as four inserts throughout this definitive work, a settling conceit in a time of instant books, cookbooks included.

Oh, don't get me started, please, on trash cookbooks. The Great American Meatloaf Contest Cookbook, by Peter "Meatloaf" (honest, this is what he calls himself on the cover) Kaufman, springs immediately to mind. A cookbook devoted to meatloaf! My Lord, if that isn't enough, the book was written by its readers! There wasn't any writing involved -- just transcription. Other ill-researched cookbooks on TexMex, Southwest and this bizarre concept called "Floribbean" -- nouvelle Miami Beach wizards drawing their "inspiration" from Caribbean dishes they've rarely tasted or even seen -- also come to mind. Flatfish and fudge sauce, that sort of thing.

And while I don't hold a grudge against the schlep who scores a book deal, even if it is on meatloaf, I am sure you agree that during the last few years there have been more bad cookbooks published than good. Throw out all low-fat, low-cholesterol cookbooks on general principal, as well as those offering 50 things to do with (fill in the blanks -- chicken, ground beef, chicken, leftovers, chicken). And the never-ending TV cooking show companion books, too. If the Two Hot Tamales -- or Barbara Kafka, for that matter -- come out with another book, I'll surely need another 10 milligrams of Valium, an overflowing martini and a quiet room with no sharp corners.

When I unwrapped this hernia of a pastry book, I was as delighted as a child at Christmas unwrapping a package that would yield weeks, months and years of wonder and pleasure. Unlike other cookbooks, this book is not only a how-to to end all how-to's, this is a book to read. Friberg, the dashing Swede who cut his teeth in cruise line kitchens proffering postcard pastries (how perfect!), spins magnificent little tales of a thousand-plus desserts. Some are coaching tips, others are reminiscences, others are historical and some are a little of each. Consider, s'il vous plait, the first two of Friberg's three-paragraph lead-in on the Sacher Torte:

In the nineteenth century, Vienna was the undisputed capital of the confectioner's art. Among all of the calorie-rich, cholesterol-saturated offerings, none was more famous than the Sacher Torte. Franz Sacher was the head pastry cook of Prince Metternich and part of the famous Viennese hotel and restaurant family. He invented the Sacher Torte for the congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Long after Sacher's death there was a great controversy with many in Vienna divided into two groups: the descendants of Franz Sacher who proclaimed that the cake must consist of two layers with jam in the center rather than, as the other side led by Edouard Demel of the famed Demel's Patisserie insisted, only one layer with jam spread on top (a recipe he claimed was authorized by Sacher's grandson). A court battle went on for six years before it was won by the Hotel Sacher family.

I have come across many recipes (and also chefs) that specify raspberry jam rather than apricot. This recipe was given to be by an Austrian konditor named Manfred with whom I worked back in the sixties. Recently this Sacher Torte was on the menu and received what the server described as 'the ultimate accolade.' One of his guests, a tourist from Vienna, told him to send word to the kitchen that this was the best Sacher Torte she had ever tasted! (Of course, who knows how long she had been away from home.)

With a work as monumental as The Professional Pastry Chef, I have found time to whip up only a fraction of the recipes, including the wow-'em-to-the-floor Tiramisu, but I can attest that these work. I've studied another one hundred of Friberg's recipes and haven't seen anything unusual, like one cup of salt instead of sugar. What I have seen is that this book's recipes often draw upon other recipes elsewhere in the masterwork, and those references are ticked to the page number of the supporting recipes. Some recipes will have four or five cross references, which, if you are preparing one of the desserts, will require patience -- and plenty of sticky tabs for rapid referral.

This, of course, is maddening, and in a lesser book would be inexcusable. In a work as large as this, well, it would be a larger work had all the cross references been repeated. No, if there is a major flaw in this book it is that it assumes that the reader really knows his way around the oven and kitchen. I don't find this a problem, but be aware that this is no book for tyros.

The differences between the third edition and its predecessors are huge. Early editions were clipped, chefs-only treatises. The latest copy has a more user-friendly format (as the publicist has it) and an emphasis on the sculptural artistry of pastry which recalls, in a nouvelle sort of way, the great architectural pastry designs of the father of all chefs, Careme.

Look here: chocolate Monarch butterflies and a marzipan pig that could easily stand in the Metropolitan Museum of Art sculpture gallery; swirls and coils of spun sugar that only Willy Wonka on an amphetamine bender could imagine; cakes, pies, tarts, tortes, a ship's hold full of mousse and puddings, including tapioca, towering meringues, ices, creams. Name it and Friberg has a recipe.

If fondant and sprayed -- sprayed -- chocolate are main clubs in Friberg's golf bag, it should be noted that he has a "country" dessert section including stick-to-the-tucker bread pudding (gentrified with chocolate and cookie citrus rind) and peach and cinnamon cobbler. Which, of course, one might top with his luscious calvados whipped cream.

To help you navigate the nouvelle waters, Friberg provides several dozen templates for making his designs, from swans to chocolate tea cups with Federal handles (make them by dipping balloons into melted chocolate, pipe the handles on parchment). Numerous "how-to" line illustrations punctuate the book, themselves a pleasure to devour.

The photographs are lovely, too, yet these are styled in a way that you'd never seen in Gourmet magazine. While Gourmet shows the featured attraction in sharp focus, the flatware, stemware and flora are often referenced in a blurred background, a soothing effect achieved with a very short lens, according to photographer friends who seem to know about these things. Friberg's pictures are as sterile as a crime-scene photo -- stark, bare, showing every detail of the subject up close and clinical, without a fork or knife blurred out in the background. Yet when trying to copy a finished dish, such police-style photos are a godsend.

And a footnote: Your dog will love this book, too. Friberg includes a recipe for dog biscuits, an odd little bagatelle that he admits probably shouldn't be in the book at all.

Books reviewed in The Scarlet Pumpernickel may be purchased at a discount on the Books For Cooks aisle at The Bookstall.

Fred Thomas has been in the magazine business for nearly two decades, first as tabloid editor at The Tampa Tribune, later as group editor for a chain of Florida magazines, and then as founding editor of Southern Homes. Now at home on the beach in South Florida, he specializes in writing about food and matters architectural.