Annual Cookbook Issue : BOOKS ON CD-ROM : From Disk to Platter

Compact disk drives are becoming standard on home computers. The reason is obvious: A single CD-ROM disk can hold as much data as dozens of floppies, making it the logical way to market reference materials such as encyclopedias . . . or cookbooks.

Most CD-ROM cookbooks to date have simply been books transferred to a disk. In other words, recipe collections--particularly convenient recipe collections, to be sure, where you can look things up quickly and print out recipes you like. However, a CD-ROM disk’s huge capacity makes it practical to get a lot more fun out of your computer. So far, the quaintly titled “4 Paws of Crab: An Interactive Thai Cookbook” has taken the most advantage of multimedia features such as music, narration and on-screen action.

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MICRO KITCHEN COMPANION GOLD EDITION (Lifestyle Software Group, 1994: $49.95)

“Micro Kitchen Companion Gold Edition” is not a cookbook in itself but a format for accessing cookbooks on CD-ROM (if the cookbooks are designed to go with it, as indicated by a Micro Kitchen Companion seal on their boxes) and for managing recipe collections on a hard disk.

This is worthwhile. To use a CD-ROM, you have to install a certain amount of software on your hard disk. The files typically go into several different directories, so if you decide you don’t want to use that particular CD-ROM disk any more, just deleting its directory won’t free up all the disk space it was occupying. There will still be an indeterminate number of cryptically named files hanging around, using up resources long after their function has been forgotten, in the manner of government agencies. Install a couple of CD-ROMs and your WINDOWSSYSTEM directory may start to look like the Washington phone book.

“Micro Kitchen Companion” greatly reduces that sort of overhead. Once you have its software installed on your hard disk, CD-ROM cookbooks that run with it add only minimally to your hard disk. This makes the disk worth having in itself, at least if you’re interested in books available in this format. So far they include “The Southern Living Cookbook,” “The Healthy Heart Cookbook,” “The Urban Peasant,” five Betty Crocker books and at least a dozen others.

The format is basically a database, like a cookbook with a lot of indexes. You can look up recipes by ingredients used, cuisine, nutritional information and a lot of other ways. You can have the program screen out recipes that call for allergenic ingredients. It can link recipes to wine selections (it includes a wine cellar log).

It will also resize any recipe for up to 999 servings, with the ability to convert odd fractions to sensible measurements (resizing is done by mathematical formula, though, so for large numbers the quantities may be off). It converts measurements to or from metric, plans meals for weeks ahead and reminds you of what you served your guests the last time they came over. It sorts shopping lists by item, store, and even aisle of the store, if you want. The coupon organizer keeps track of expiration dates.

You can enter or copy recipes onto your hard disk to create your own personal collection, and cross-reference between it and other CD-ROMs in the series. There are pronunciation guides and narrated action demonstrations of techniques, such as filleting fish and making pastry dough.

The two recipe collections that come on this disk seem to be mostly for demonstration purposes. They are the large (453 recipes) but undistinguished “New Currents in American Cuisine” and the more interesting but more higgledy-piggledy “A Taste for All Seasons,” a sampler of recipes from other disks in the series.

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GREAT RESTAURANTS, WINERIES AND BREWERIES (Deep River Publishing, 1994: $39.95)

“Great Restaurants, Wineries and Breweries” is not primarily a cookbook, though it contains more than 200 recipes from the restaurants it lists. As the name indicates, it’s a guide to American restaurants, wineries and breweries.

It provides more fun than a mere database. A map appears; you click on a state, mouse your cursor around on it and then pick from a list of restaurants (or wineries, or breweries) in the area. Click on the name of a restaurant and you see a color photo of the place and a list of specialties. You can click to see a page of the menu, hours and accommodations information, etc.

The restaurant selection is surprisingly up-to-date, but not quite complete. The L.A. selection, for instance, omits Patina and Spago, just as the Bay Area selection does not include Chez Panisse. New Orleans lists K-Paul’s, Emeril’s and Commander’s Palace, but not Antoine’s, Galatoire’s or Brennan’s.

Maybe a third of the restaurants have provided recipes. Some are old warhorses we’ve seen a million times, like Chasen’s hobo steak or the Arches’ steak Diane, but Citrus, for instance, gives a great summer tomato tart with basil crust and a cream of wheat filling that The Times Test Kitchen has tried.

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4 PAWS OF CRAB: An Interactive Thai Cookbook (Live Oak Multimedia, 1994: $44.95)

“4 Paws of Crab” was chef Bancha “Bird” Leelaguagoon’s mistaken way of calling for crab claws . Characteristically, the creators of this CD-ROM disk decided to make it the disk’s title. They saw “4 Paws of Crab” not just as a cookbook but as an exploration of cultural contact.

This means that there’s a lot of stuff you don’t ordinarily expect to find in a cookbook. Little wise sayings pop up on the screen from time to time. When you page through the guide to 63 Thai ingredients (“Happy Market”), you sometimes come upon a Thai scene with a voice-over anecdote. One of the four sections of the program, “Mirrors,” consists of “Bird” and one of the creators of the disk trading impressions about each other’s country.

Another section of the program, “Time Romp,” tells you what was happening on 30 dates in either Thai or American history. The Thai history will be unfamiliar to most Americans; the American history will be all too familiar. It’s the politically correct sort of information, focusing primarily on race, class and gender conflicts.

The recipe collection is the most impressively developed section. The whole time you’re in it, there’s an evocative background of Bangkok street sounds. The recipe you pick appears over a snapshot of someplace in Thailand. Every recipe includes a “demo”--photos of various stages in the preparation--and many (all but three of the curries, for instance) also have “video demos,” which show the preparation and cooking in slightly jerky motion. The voice-over narrative is often really informative.

Like any of the other disks, this one makes it easy for you to print out a copy of the 44 recipes. Some people might think that is not many recipes, but once they get to play around with this entertaining disk they may change their minds.

Note

Not every home computer can use CD-ROM. Apart from the CD-ROM drive itself, on a PC you need a 386 or higher chip (the higher the MHz rating, the better), at least 4 megabytes of RAM and an SVGA monitor. “4 Paws” requires at least a 40 MHz chip and 8 megabytes of RAM. (At lower CPU speeds, expect not only slowness but flickering and false color while the screen is being repainted.) A PC should run Windows 3.1. The disks reviewed in this article were for the PC. “4 Paws” is available for the Macintosh, for which it was originally developed.

Like everything else in the personal computer world, CD-ROMs tend to be discounted, so the suggested retail price is somewhat arbitrary. I found “Micro Kitchen Companion Gold Edition” and “Great Restaurants, Wineries and Breweries” selling for $29.95.