We have a copy of Larousse. It's really more like an illustrated encyclopedia, and appears to be rather French-centric.
We have an old
Cooking Encyclopedia published by the Cuinary Arts Institute (of America) and a newer book by them called
The New Professional Chef, which I believe is actually a text book that was used in their courses. The old
Cooking Encyclopedia is America and Euro-centric, however.
We also have a few books in the Culinaria series -- the two volume set on European cooking and then a copy of
Culinaria: The United States. Because the US is a melting pot of so many different cultures, the above volume does discuss some of the more popular foods from around the world, e.g., the section on Texas discusses Mexican food, and the section on California discusses sushi. But it isn't what I'd call comprehensive, by any stretch.
My wife and I collect cookbooks and books on cooking, and we have several hundred of them. I can't say, though, that we have any single book, or set, that encompasses foods of the world. The closest we would probably get would be a
Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cooking, a 12 volume set that was probably published in the 60s or 70s. And without pulling a volume off the shelf, I'd be willing to bet that it's Western-centric as well.
One reason why we have collected so many cookbooks is because that's apparently what it takes if you want to have a nice collection of recipes of foods and cooking techniques from around the world. Another is that we've found that the older cookbooks, dating back to, say, the 1950s, take a different approach to cooking than the modern books do, and it's interesting to see how cooking styles have evolved over time. For example, I have an old Good Housekeeping cookbook that was my grandmothers, and dates back to the 1940s. It discusses things like plucking chickens.
Nonetheless it's one of the cookbooks I refer to most often, simply because of the simple purity of its many recipes and the fact that it is quintessentially an American cookbook.
So anyway, short of doing as we've done, I dunno what else to tell you, especially if you're intersted in cooking styles of the Middle and Far East. Or, say, South America. Or Africa. But if you run across a comprehensive encyclopedic source that does a good job of covering the world's cuisines, please let is know. Because I'd like to add it to our collection.
