Pierre's recipes are studies in ethnology as much as they serve as the essentials of French cuisine. Terence Scully (French emeritus, Wilfrid Laurier U.) provides a new English translation of this seventeenth-century classic with very helpful notes (thus avoiding mistakes in how you blanche and marinade cabbage, for example), showing how tastes and trends changed as the influence of Italy rose and that of medieval cookery fell. The classics, including the puff pastry and pie recipes and the confections, which offer such bites of heaven as rose preserve, tell us much about what we have lost to the TV dinner. Distributed in the US by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)