The book, Davidson's magnum opus with "more than a million words, mostly his own",[1] covers the nature and history of foodstuffs worldwide, starting from aardvark and ending with zuppa inglese.

It is compiled with especially strong coverage of European and in particular British cookery and contains no recipes.

They include information on specific foods, cooking terms, culinary tools, countries, traditions, and biographies of chefs and cookbook authors.

[3]Major articles are signed and include bibliographic references, and there is a comprehensive overall bibliography.

The New York Times called the book "a masterly work with a variety of voices, from the straightforward, almost dry, to the quirky and the witty" and a work "dense with extremely thorough and well-written entries, enhanced by cross-references and indexes and larded with anecdotes and strong opinions.