The German Cookbook

I was really looking forward to this book, especially since it contains many regional classics of German cuisine.however, after less than one hour reading through the book, I have found so many flaws and mistakes, that I am speechless...whoever did this translation, did a rather sloppy job.a few examples:in the chapter about Bavaria: "Hamburg (sic!!) is home to Oktoberfest, a folk and beer festival that has been running since 1810"...whenever a recipe needs 'caraway' (German word in the original version of the book is "kümmel"), this book lists 'cumin', which is a spice often used in Asian food, unknown in German cuisine, and very different in flavour than caraway! using cumin instead of caraway basically ruins any of these recipes.the photos are very misleading, and display the dishes in ways that are not typical, so they can't be used as a reference. the salads look completely dry as if there is no dressing at all. and whoever prepared the the 'Koenigsberger Kloepse' (meat balls) for the photo, has never seen the real dish. do a quick Google image search, to see what I am talking about.throughout the book, the photos have no image description, so that you don't even know what dish you are looking at.basically, to find this book useful, you need to know the recipes or dishes they stand for, so that you can filter out the misleading or false information.I believe that the original version of this book ("Deutschland - das kochbuch", by the same author) is a very good source of classic German recipes. but this version with its useless photos, bad translation, and obvious mistakes will be a frustrating experience for anyone trying to cook the recipes and learn about German cuisine.

Beautiful book with some great recipes and images - it's even good for inspiration, in case you have ingredients at home that you don't know what to do with, because a lot of the recipes use pretty basic ingredients. My only gripe is that my book was delivered without any protective paper or plastic wrapping around it - it was just in the delivery box as it is - which is fine although the book did arrive a bit scuffed.

Loving this book for some top notch winter comfort food. Some of the recipes take a little tweaking and can get a touch complicated, but the end results are amazing. (Just remember to use caraway when it says cumin).

Good book with great German cuisine, just turns out it's not entirely up our street! Great if you like meat meat and more meat!

Easy recipes with easy to find ingredients.Excellent

Bought this for my son as a present. A very big,heavy book but full of loads of interesting recipes. He loves it

I’m a big fan of these Phaidon national cookbooks but here they have totally dropped the ball. The book is littered with mistakes, wrong translations, and miscalculation in ingredients.I’m also massive fan of German cooking so am even more disappointed.Heart sunk when Oktoberfest is located in Hamburg in the introduction... but then we move on the the recipes. Kümmel is caraway not cumin (Kreuzkümmel), this mistranslation appears regularly and completely distorts German flavours.Highlight is suggested use of 200g of yeast! That’d be some prove...Just really sloppy, lazy work. And this is not cheap.Also annoyed that it doesn’t give the German names for the dishes just, often weird, literal translations. Do both, as usually happens in these books.Real mess.

Having grown up in Germany and with fond memories of the local dishes I love this book - it is by far the most comprehensive cookbook of German recipes I have ever come across, almost a German food bible, both in volume and authenticity, and with reference to respective regions as well, which is very good, as Germany is a large country and a northern noodle is very different from a southern "Spätzle". I cannot wait to cook some of the old favourites my German grandmother used to cook - just reading the recipes I can almost taste them now.