Rating: 
Summary: Recommended
Review: This book is quite good. The organization/layout is fine. Not a cookbook in the strict sense, but a book of cooking techniques/chemistry followed by examples (aka recipes). Not suggested for beginning cooks. Suggested for cooks who enjoy cooking and want to upgrade their knowledge/skills. Also recommended for Alton Brown fans.
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Summary: Must Read Before You Turn on the Oven!
Review: I took a class from Shirley before buying the book. In that 2-hour class, I learned more "rules-of-thumb" about cooking than I had gathered in 25 years of cooking. Finally, it all makes sense - the necessary logic to alter recipes when they're not right - the ability to read a recipe and KNOW it is right or wrong before you waste the time and ingredients! Let's take biscuits: they sound simple; most are awful. After listening to Shirley - or reading about biscuits in her book, I realized I could apply the same principle to a box of Bisquick! I took an unmeasured amount of mix, added milk to a manageable consistancy, rolled in flour, and now my biscuits are the best in town. It's just hard not to share the secret!This should be regarded as a textbook, not a recipe book for entertaining. I read it slowly, applied her wisdom -tried to challenge it, and by the time I finished the book, I feel as if I finished my first year at the Cullinary Institute. If you care about what you cook, if you enjoy puttering in the kitchen, this book is the key to success. Example 2: a famous cook used two boxes of light brown sugar - same brand. One carmelized, the other flunked. They called Shirley in a panic. It took her a while to realize that at that time, the FDA did not reguire brown sugar to be labeled cane or beet based. Cane carmelizes, beet does not. Now, don't we need that information BEFORE we try to impress our closest friends - or the boss - with an elegant creme brulee! You'll appreciate what you learn here, but don't expect an easy read. My copy is already dog-earred; I can't possibly remember it all, and so much is vital to success.
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Summary: Clearly written, scientific explanation of why cooking works
Review: I don't find this book to be overwritten at all. I find it to be a clear and well-written book on not only how to do something, but why that something works the way it does. I'd question starting out with bread recipes, but on the other hand the Brioche recipe that started the book out is easy to do and quite tasty. This is more of a browser's book than a straight read. I started out with the vegetable section and skipped around from there. The recipes are simple and straightforward, and everyone from beginners to trained chefs will learn something.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Used Cookbook in My Kitchen
Review: If I could only have one cookbook in my home, this would be it. I'm an avid home cook with a small collection of decent cookbooks, but time and time again, I open only this one. Shirley Corriher dispenses her years of wisdom with incredible insight and understanding that many of us cook, but have no idea what we've really done and why we've done it. She takes you by the hand and allows you to know why you're making a recipe a certain way, and then turns you loose to try variations on a theme with what you have at home. What a great cookbook!
Rating:
Summary: Indispensible book for the kitchen
Review: Quite simply, this book is a necessity for every person who wants to know the "why" of cooking and baking. Ms. Corriher explains the science of baking in terminology that is easily understood. Although I've been cooking and baking since I was 8, it's only been since I purchased this book that I've come to understand why ingredients act and interact with each other the way they do, and why certain changes in the form of an ingredient (softened versus melted butter, for example) render one form a completely different ingredient than the other form. As a result, I'm now able to correct and improve recipes, and create my own recipes, having a better idea before I even start cooking of what the results will be.
Rating:
Summary: This book will save time, money, and failure
Review: This is the kind of cookbook I have only dreamed of. It explains the why of cooking. I always wanted to know what was happening and Cookwise explains it in a way I can easily understand and want to read. I now know how to alter a recipe to avoid any failures or undesirable results. This is a must for those who love to cook. It was recommended to me by a professional chef. Boy was she right! This isn't so much a cookbook as a guide book with some recipes.
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Summary: The serious home-cook's bible
Review: This book is a precious fountain of knowledge and experience. The author who is clearly an able cook and teacher offers information that is vital for anyone who wishes to understand the processes that occur while we cook. The language of this book is very friendly and reading it, one gets the impression that the author is right there explaining and supporting. What can this book contribute to your cooking abilities? It allows the serious home-cook to improve existing recipes or create new ones according to his/her taste. It empowers us to correct mistakes (who hasn't blundered a recipe and wished for the ability to fix it?), adjust recipes to local materials and fine tune all those nagging little techniques we never quite got to mastering (the elusive meringue, getting consistently perfect pie-crust etc'). This isn't a recipe book and shouldn't be treated as one. The recipes are examples of subjects explained and are not the real value of this book. The more useful recipes are the ones that provide basic examples (and there are enough of those). If you want to prepare something "Now" (as one of the reviewers of this book pointed out) and have no desire to pursue excellence in your kitchen, then this book isn't for you. As a serious amateur cook and baker, I feel this book has promoted me to a higher level of cooking abilities. I have learned more from this book than any other cookbook I have and I do have quite a few. My cooking library consists of about 60 cookbooks and this one gets into my top 5 list of favorites hands down.
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Summary: A wonderful book for the intellectual cook
Review: This is a gem of a cook book. It is more then a cook book it is a How to on cooking. This book brings cooking down to a level, where it is broke down to scientific terms, where you can truly know why an ingredient does what it does.As a chef I truly LOVE this book and recommend it to any body.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book hampered by poor editing
Review: "Cookwise" is a mixed bag that tries to accomplish several goals at once. It's part upscale cookbook, offering recipes for Hot Thai Curried Chicken with Coconut Milk and Avocados, Ring of the Sea Schrimp with Fish Market Sauce and Cherry-Chambord Butter; part basic cookbook that discusses making stock, omlets, vinaigrettes, biscuits, pie crusts and sauces; part trouble-shooting guide that explains which flours are appropriate for biscuits, pancakes and bread, how to beat egg whites so that they rise properly, and how to calculate the right amount of sugar for the perfect fruit ice; and sometimes part memoir. It's a schitzophrentic book. There's no doubt that Shirley Corriher knows cooking like Dr. Stephen Hawking knows the cosmos. She came to the kitchen by a circuitous route, as a research biochemist at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville. When her husband opened a boarding school in Atlanta, she was responsible for feeding 140 boys three meals a day. A winning entry in a grits recipe contest in the mid-1970s brought her cooking lessons with Nathalie Dupree, who was impressed with her pupil's questions and knowledge. Since then, the 63-year-old Corriher has built a career as a food consultant, working with restaurant chefs and food industry scientists, leading workshops, and writing articles. "Cookwise" is her first book, a decade in the making and, judging by the long list of people she thanks in the beginning, a number of editors, including top food editor Maria Guarnaschelli, who completed the makeover of the "Joy of Cooking" recently. So there's a lot of prime information tucked here and there among the 230-plus recipes. The problem is digging it all out. It took a number of readings to conclude that the editors of "Cookwise" thought the seven major chapters were too large to be digested, so they broke them up with recipes, smaller articles and cooking tips. The mix was sweetened with a hash of type fonts chosen more to create a visually appealing style than for clarity's sake. Since it's publication, I've consulted it a number of times, and found that "Cookwise" makes an acceptible and interesting supplement to "Joy of Cooking" (both volumes) and Julia Child's "Way to Cook," without replacing them.
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Summary: Answers The Question, "WHY didn't that receipt work!".
Review: Ever borrowed a great recipe only to have it not work out for you? This book is a great "basics" for how to improve all kinds of recipes. The author is generous with acknowledging other great chefs/bakers who she learned from. This book provides a foundation for cooks to improve and experiment with their own "family" recipes.
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