Vegan Cuisine is a 496-page luxury vegan cookbook by French chef Jean-Christian Jury that contains an impressive 800 plant-based recipes.
I got Vegan Cuisine as a present from my partner, wrapped beautifully. When I tried to lift it, I genuinely gasped. It was heavy. Almost three kilos heavy.
I remember thinking: This cannot possibly be a cookbook.
It looked more like an art monograph: oversized, elegant, the kind of book you'd display on a coffee table. Maybe artful pictures of vegetables?
And in a way, I wasn't wrong. The book is a work of art. But instead of just artful food photography, it also holds 800 vegan recipes.
Yes. Eight hundred.
In This Post:
The Facts
They are impressive:
- Size: 24.5 × 34 cm
- Weight: almost 3 kg
- Pages: 496
- Recipes: 800 (130 illustrated)
It's massive. Truly massive. Larger than any other cookbook I own (and I own quite a few).
Published by teNeues, you notice the quality immediately. teNeues specializes in luxury coffee table books, and it shows. There are three ribbon bookmarks attached, which is a small but practical luxury. And despite its size, the book opens flat. A blessing in the kitchen.
It feels like all the makers involved genuinely cared.
What's Inside?
Starters, soups, salads, mains, sauces, chutneys, pestos, desserts, cheeses, crackers, breads, smoothies. Basically everything, basics included.
But also the "extras" that make home cooking even more exciting: puff pastry, kimchi, tahini, tofu, curry pastes, even wasabi mayonnaise.
The range is staggering. After all, we're talking about 800 recipes.
What surprised me most, though, is how many of them are actually simple, with often just a handful of ingredients.
The instructions are clear and precise, for both a beginner-friendly dishes or something more advanced. What you won't find, though, are personal essays or long introductions from the author. There isn't even a biosketch. Just recipe after recipe after recipe.
I find that refreshing.
About the Author
There would, of course, be much to say about the author.
Jean-Christian Jury was an internationally acclaimed chef from Toulouse, France, and the founder and later patron of the Michelin-starred vegan restaurant La Mano Verde in Berlin.
Jury saw cooking as a universal language of care, as an "act of love." These are his own words from the introduction to his later cookbook, Vegan: The Cookbook. If you'd like to get to know him a little better, I highly recommend looking into that book as well. In it, he gathered around 500 recipes from more than 150 countries, many discovered during his extensive travels.
I've cooked some of the Romanian recipes from that book, and they tasted exactly like the dishes I grew up with. Truly authentic.
I understand that he was anything but an egotistical "celebrity chef." For one, from his cookbooks. He lets the food speak for itself and almost disappears behind his craft.
You can also sense it in his interviews. I enjoyed reading the one by Rosa Rivas, which offers insight into his culinary background and philosophy. The article is in Spanish, but you can easily read it in English using an automatic translation.
The Style of Cooking
Many recipes are approachable, like the zucchini & tomato soup, the zucchini carpaccio with basil, the avocado Jalapeño poppers, or the vegan mozzarella tucked into the pizza recipe (and the pizza recipe itself). I'd say most of them fall into that category, and only a few call for lesser-known or harder-to-find ingredients like rejuvelac, calcium citrate, samphire (sea asparagus), or truffles.
Some recipes clearly aim higher, like vegan croissants, saffron ravioli with mushrooms, homemade tofu, and flambéed raspberries.
There's a certain haute cuisine energy throughout the book. Of course there is. These recipes come from a chef trained at the highest level. You can sense they've been refined over many years.
That said, this is not necessarily the cookbook I would hand to someone brand new to vegan cooking. There are gentler starting points - cookbooks that walk you through tofu basics or egg replacements and offer short explanations of less familiar ingredients.
The Photography
This is a book for people who care about aesthetics as much as flavor.
The photography by Jörg Lehmann is minimalist and almost meditative. Very intentional.
What matters most in the images speaks for itself: the food. There are no elaborate decorations distracting you from the main character. Just the dish, beautifully plated.
Is It Worth €98?
Well, it's expensive. I did gasp at the price.
But this cookbook feels more like a luxury art book that happens to contain 800 recipes. I believe, the craftsmanship, experience, and sheer amount of work that went into creating this tome, justify its price.
If you love:
- Cookbooks as objects
- Vegan cuisine
- Entertaining
- Beautiful design
- Or collect high-quality culinary books
Then yes, Vegan Cuisine is for you.
But if you:
- Want quick weeknight meals
- Prefer small, lightweight cookbooks
- Or are just starting out with vegan cooking
Then it may feel overwhelming.
Final Thoughts
I can't help but love this elegant masterpiece of a cookbook.
To me, Vegan Cuisine feels like the life's work of an incredibly talented chef, condensed into one volume. It's the kind of book you gift for a milestone, or buy to celebrate your own culinary journey.
It's timeless.
In Memoriam
With great sadness, I learned of the passing of Jean-Christian Jury just two years after I published this article. My thoughts are with his family, his friends, and the many people whose lives he touched, through his restaurants, his travels, and his cookbooks.
His passing is a great loss to the vegan community. He was a determined, kind, and deeply talented ambassador for plant-based cuisine.
He lives on in our hearts and in the outstanding cookbooks he created.
This note was added in Februay 2026.
A big thank you goes out to the publisher teNeues for giving me permission to use the pictures from the German edition.
If you're curious how Vegan Cuisine compares to other standout vegan cookbooks, I've also rounded up my favorite releases from 2024 here.
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Enjoy,
Ramona
♥
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