50 Foods is a guide to deliciousness, a highly useful book about the pleasures of eating — apples, asparagus, baguettes, beef, butter, Camembert, figs, ham, oysters, Parmigiano-Reggiano, salmon, strawberries... You might say it makes you an instant connoisseur, if that weren’t a contradiction in terms. The information comes from years of writing and research; there’s enough depth for chefs and yet it’s accessible to anyone. If you love food, it should be on your shelf.

Behr presents the essence of each subject, focusing on aroma, appearance, flavor, and texture to determine what the “best” means. There’s essential information about buying, using, preparing, and enjoying. Behr tells you how to select top quality — signs of freshness and ripeness, best season, top varieties, proper aging. If the way to prepare, serve, or eat something is little known, he explains it (how to open an oyster, why the best way to cook green beans is boiling, how to clean a whole salted anchovy, when to eat and when to discard the rind of a cheese). Behr names the most complementary foods and flavors for each of these 50 important foods, and he names the wines that go with them.

The selection of foods provides a broad sensory range. Most are raw materials, but some — bread, ham, cheese — have been fermented or otherwise transformed. Six of the 50 are cheeses. As Behr explains, cheese is probably the best food, as wine is the best drink. He argues that food tastes more delicious when it’s closer to nature. Not high technology but skillful use of low technology almost always leaves more flavor. Scientific insight allows us to refine the old methods, so they yield more consistent high quality.

You may not always have the best, but with the information in this book you can eat better every day. Knowing good food is part of a complete understanding of the world — part of a full enjoyment of nature, a full experience of the senses. No matter how much or how little you know about food, 50 Foods is a beautifully written, practical guide to deliciousness. With color illustrations by Mikel Jaso throughout.


50 Foods won first place in non-fiction design at the 2014 New York Book Show, and Mikel Jaso's illustrations won a 2014 Junceda Award in Spain.


More Praise for 50 Foods:

“50 Foods is one of those books that you can learn something with every sentence that you read.”
David Lebovitz, author of My Paris Kitchen and the award-winning blog davidlebovitz.com

“For the reader who loves to burrow into a food book with as much enthusiasm as with a novel. / It’s a delightful book with beautiful design and clever illustrations from Mikel Jaso that will make you smile (at least I did).”
Lee Svitak Dean, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“For people who care about food, the book informs and fascinates.”
Hannah Palmer Egan, The Village Voice

“The detail he goes into is breathtaking... I consider myself schooled in food lore, but I came away so much more knowledgeable. Even better, it made me think about food in a different way, in an Ed way, as if breaking some sort of fourth wall. If you read just the first sentence of all the beautifully illustrated chapters, you would come away a smarter and wiser food person.”
Alice Feiring, The Feiring Line

“Part aesthetic appreciation, part a series of strong, knowledgeable and educated value judgments, this is a reading book, a delightful companion on the bedside table. / A superbly opinionated writer... Ed Behr is famous for the perspicacity with which he tackles almost any subject, but especially any topic having to do with food or drink.”
Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Zester Daily

“I like to think of 50 Foods as an opinionated, practical and very selective companion to The Oxford Companion to Food. [Behr’s] book teems with useful information about buying, preparing and enjoying everything from anchovies to walnuts.”
Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen

“Embraces wine in a way few food books have... / Behr’s wonderfully erudite views about flavor are used to full advantage.”
Jon Bonné, San Francisco Chronicle

“This is a book to dip into, to surprise and educate yourself. It engages both the brain and the palate, and you’ll be newly inspired to enjoy and appreciate your food because of it.”
M.M. Pack, Austin Chronicle

“Grace, authority, and good humor. / This isn’t a cookbook, but it is a book for cooks ... and eaters! / How to choose, prepare and enjoy them at their best. / Passionate, informative... a terrific gift for the food lover.”
Dana Velden, TheKitchn

“50 Foods may take the shape of a culinary encyclopedia, but it is never encyclopedic in its approach. Instead, Edward Behr plays curator, selecting the best ingredients as his subjects (crab, blue; oysters, raw) and crafting descriptions at once evocative, educational, and eminently practical. You’ll learn about the history of the baguette, but also, more important, how to predict its quality at the bakery. You’ll brush up on the anatomy of an artichoke, then salivate over descriptions of them prepared alla giudia. It is, as Behr puts it, ‘a guide to deliciousness.’”
Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns

“Ed Behr’s 50 Foods extols the pleasures of his favorites from anchovies to walnuts, with plenty of handy advice about how to tell the difference between a great pear or cheese and one that’s not so great, and what wines make good foods taste even better.  He knows the ins and outs of delicious food, and you will too after reading this book.”
Marion Nestle, professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and author of What to Eat