The Universal Gastronomy Authority

World Kitchen Journal

A reference is a book you open twice: once for the news and once for the method. This journal is written to be opened the second time.

I. The reference

The journal keeps the canon of cooking. That means four things and nothing else: the dishes that define a table; the technique behind each of them, with the name of the cook who set it; the regions where a kitchen is born; and the cup that is poured alongside.

A page earns its place by teaching something that lasts. A recipe is printed whole, with its ingredients and its method, or it is not printed. A trick, a shortcut sold as a discovery, or a shout at the reader about what they have been doing wrong is not a page of this journal.

II. The Masthead

Ingrid Solheim, Editor of the Authority. Keeps the index and decides what belongs to the canon. Cooked professionally in Copenhagen and Lyon before editing.

The Technique desk — How a dish is actually made

Jean-Luc Moreau. Writes an instruction so that a first-time cook can follow it. Cooked the line in Lyon for nine years.

Claire Beaumont. Doughs, laminations and the chemistry of sugar. Weighs everything, including the salt.

The Regions desk — Kitchen by kitchen, region by region

Marco Bellini. Italy, the Mediterranean and the Balkans, kitchen by kitchen. Names the town, never the continent.

Catherine Walsh. From the Andes to the Caribbean coast. Cooks the dish before writing its history.

The Canon desk — The cooks and rooms that set the standard

Helen Ashworth. Keeps the list of the dishes and rooms that set the standard, and argues with it in print.

The Ingredients desk — The raw material and its season

Anna Keller. Seasons, varieties and where a thing is at its best. Talks to growers, not to packagers.

The Cup desk — What is poured alongside

Oliver Grant. Tea, coffee and wine at table: what the drink does to the dish.

The board and its standing orders →

III. How a page is made

Every page names its region, never merely its continent, and names the cook who set the method wherever that cook is known. Ingredients are given with their measures; steps are given in the order a kitchen follows them. Every recipe the journal prints goes into a standing index, to be consulted years from now.

A page from the day carries the hour the journal set it. A page from the archive keeps the date its story was first told; an old dish is never dressed up as news.

IV. Notes

1. Contact. The desks can be reached by answering any issue of the letter, or from the letter box that sits on every page. Every message is read by a person.
2. Corrections. A page that gets a method, a name, a region or a date wrong is corrected or withdrawn as soon as a reader points it out. The letter is the way to point it out.
3. Terms of use. The pages are for reading and for cooking from. Reprinting a whole page needs the written consent of the desk; a headline or a short passage, quoted with a link, needs none.
4. Privacy. There are no accounts and no tracking cookies. The one thing the journal stores is the address a reader gives for the letter, and it is used for the letter alone. Pages a reader saves stay in that reader’s browser.
5. Copyright. The journal’s own pages and drawings belong to the journal. A method, a measure, a name or a date belongs to nobody. A photograph carries its author’s credit wherever that author is known.
6. Figures. Prices, quantities and nutrition figures on these pages are a guide and can age. Check with the producer, the grower or the room before relying on them.