How to Know it All
People in the food business are surprised when I tell them I’m a self-taught cook. While I come from a family of good cooks, cooking was anathema to me until I lucked into a position as food editor of a teenage magazine in New York City. Many trials (and a few errors) later, I’ve become a pretty competent cook and have developed a good palate.
In the more than 25 years in this business, I’ve learned a lot about food. And what I don’t know, I can easily research, accessing my office library of more than 500 volumes on food and wine — cookbooks, scientific and historical reference books, food essays, food issues and more. I continue to edit my collection, discarding ones that are past their prime and buying new books to keep current.
I’ve set aside a few books for my go-to shelf. They aren’t all the newest books, but they serve as tried-and-true references. If you’re just starting in the food world or want to learn more, these may help:
- For research on the science of food and cooking, try On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee or Cookwise by Shirely O. Corriher.
- For wine, I turn to The Oxford Companion to Wine, edited by Jancis Robinson, a thorough, one-volume reference guide with 3,000 entries.
- For recipe writing and editing, The Recipe Writer’s Handbook by Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Jane L. Baker explores the nuts and bolts of this craft. To double check on cooking times, there’s Timing is Everything, The Complete Timing Guide to Cooking by Jack Piccolo.
For general definitions of terms, Food Lover’s Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst is a well-loved favorite. The last edition was published in 2001 so some of the newest trendy words may not be featured, but with nearly 6,000 food, drink and culinary terms, the book covers a lot of territory. While you can buy spelling software for food, I find that when I’m writing on my computer and a food word is highlighted by Spellcheck, I can look it up in Food Lover’s, make sure the word is correct in my copy, then just hit “add to dictionary” and I never have to worry again about where all those “c”s go in focaccia.
In the end, does it matter if someone in my field can cook, knows something about the science of food, understands how recipes are developed and can spell Italian food words correctly? Absolutely. Food marketing communications should start first with understanding the food and the client’s objectives. Then strategies can be developed around the objectives that make sense for the food product, and sound tactics will follow.
INSIGHT: There’s a lot to getting food PR right. It takes time to learn. Books and backgrounding can help.
