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Does anyone know of a language textbook that teachs culinary French? There are some wonderful books from French patisseries that I would love to own and use but are unlikely to be translated into English or appear in a timely fashion for me. My "school boy" Fremch was never very good; the qualification I have is not worth the paper it is printed on. Those language "skills" are truly non-existant and I am not looking for a general textbook but one specifically covering kitchen/bakery dialect if there is such a book?

The closest thing to what you're looking for seems to be The A-Z Verbs of Cooking. David Lebovitz reviewed it and another book, more directed at tourists and restaurant-goers, in 2009.

Ferrandi's Le Lexique Culinaire seems ideal, aimed at "keen cooks and future professionals". Unfortunately, it's a French-French dictionary; I was led astray by its having an English-language promo page.

Do you have Larousse Gastronomique?  And a good French-English dictionary?  I'd recommend spending a week or two making your way through one of the pastry bibles you're interested in with those as tools, then see if you want to seek out the The A-Z Verbs of Cooking.

This isn't what The Pathetic Baker is looking for, but I came across it in my search and think it could be of great value to interested EYB members:

There are many online glossaries of French foods and cooking terms, but Patricia Wells' site has one that seems both more comprehensive and more authoritative than a lot of the others.

Thanks for the various links to websites. Sadly some of the links within them now suffer bit-rot.

My search for a textbook (or dictionary) started when I was sent a recipe in French and there were abbreviations I did not recognise. Using ChatGPT (the much maligned AI tool de jour) for some technical questions I also entered a query about abbreviations in French recipes ChatGPT generated a list of the more common ones, which thankfully includes those in the emailed recipe. Perhaps what I should be looking for is not a textbook/dictionary but some hybrid mix of Google Translate together with ChatGPT pseudo questions and answers. Although a book would still be preferable I think.