Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking: Volume 1 (Ruhlman's Ratios) Paperback – 7 Sept. 2010

So, so informative, well written and really useful. The ratios for bread, pastry, choux and sauces are game changing for me and easy to remember. I highly recommend this book.

This book is so informative I wonder how I've ever managed all these years without it. It distils the knowhow of professional chefs who do this stuff by training and instinct into a few pages which are well written and easy to read. All of a sudden, recipes have lost their mystery and fear and I find myself actually knowing what proportions to use and what to expect. I find myself now reading recipes and comparing their proportions of ingredients to the ratios Michael Ruhlman recommends. My pastry has improved dramatically, I made perfect Yorkshire puddings following the popover formulation. My Crème Anglaise was to die for and my béarnaise which I have hitherto split every time was perfect and delicious. And that is in the first 10 days of owning the book. I am delighted with this purchase and have subsequently also purchased Ruhlman's Twenty which is another excellent addition to my library.

Like it, all in US measurements though

Not sure it merits a whole book, but the ratios are useful.

I loved this book! I'm an avid reader of cookery books and read far more recipes than I ever make, because I love the creativity of inventing and improvising with what I have, using the ideas I picked up while reading. This book made me realise what I have been searching for - the basic secrets of success that will allow me to be creative and have fun with cooking and still guarantee success every time. This is it! Absolutely fascinating! It is all about proportion! There are also lots of tips on how to cook successfully, as well as recipes that exemplify how each basic idea can be adapted. The person who understands this can be a truly creative - and economical - cook. Brilliant idea for a book! I plan to make a list of the basic ratios and keep it in my kitchen for reference, as well as re-reading the book every so often to absorb it's full message.

A Fantastic Idea turned into an Excellent Resource!I can't believe I'm only seeing this after 20 years of working in kitchens!What a powerful aid to the memory to reduce the most basic form of a recipe to a ratio. To learn instead of a catalogue of recipes for the same thing, merely the nature of the ratio and the possibilities that one can extend from those ratios.I'm impressed!

I love the concept of this book. Learn the basic ratios of doughs, batters, sauces and custards and you can pretty much improvise your own recipes from there. Arguably, the summary of the entire book is actually on the front cover and first few pages, so why buy the book? - Without the book, you're missing out on how you do start to improvise in the rest of the chapters from the basics.It is frustrating that Ruhlman mixes up weight ratios with volumes within some of the recipes, but if you accept that it is just another way to make your improvisation easier, it helps. The kindle version obviously misses out on the colour pictures, but it is nevertheless more of a text book than a recipe book.

I'm sure this book is great - if you're American, or a pre-decimalisation British person. But the whole point of this book is "ratios", and it's more or less impossible to scale recipes up or down when they're presented in pounds / ounces / cups, and so on. How hard would it have been to give metric measurements as well as Imperial ones?