Mastering Spice

A recipe-driven guide to spice blending from the owner of La Boite, New York City’s celebrated spice shop. Lior Lev Sercarz has spent his career creating custom spice blends for some of the world’s best chefs, and this book distills that expertise into 250 recipes organized around master techniques.

Why Start Here

Where Farrimond explains the science, Sercarz teaches the craft. Every section of the book opens with a master recipe and a core technique, then shows you how swapping spices or adjusting proportions produces an entirely different dish. A basic vinaigrette becomes four distinct dressings. A simple roast chicken transforms depending on whether you reach for urfa biber, sumac, or Aleppo pepper.

This approach is powerful because it trains your palate rather than just filling your recipe box. You start to understand what each spice does in context, how it changes when paired with fat, acid, or heat, and how small adjustments can shift a dish from North African to South Asian to Eastern European. Sercarz includes his own signature blends alongside traditional ones, and the headnotes share the thinking behind each combination.

The book was named one of the best cookbooks of the year by the New York Times Book Review, and for good reason. It is practical, opinionated, and deeply informed by years of professional spice work.

What to Expect

A substantial 272-page cookbook with beautiful photography. The recipes are organized by type (breakfast, vegetables, grains, meat, fish, desserts) rather than by spice, which makes it easy to cook from. Difficulty is moderate: the recipes themselves are mostly straightforward, but the spice blends sometimes call for ingredients you may need to source from specialty shops or online. Sercarz provides guidance on sourcing and storage throughout.