Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia. Ed. by Ken Albala. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2011. 4 vols. acid free $380 (ISBN 978-0-313-37626-9). Ebook available (978-0-313-37627-6), call for pricing.

In his preface to this work, noted food scholar Ken Albala (Food and Faith in Christian Culture, Pancake: A Global History) characterizes his four volume encyclopedia as the culmination of the 20 volume Food Cultures around the World series, a project that he edited for nearly ten years. He and over a hundred food scholars, writers, and chefs expand on material previously covered by the series and add many new articles, as they attempt to summarize the world's food culture. In large part they succeed on account of the resource's treatment of "individual food cultures as discrete units of analysis"...