In late 2008, Robert Steinberg, co-author of this week's Cook the Book selection, finally succumbed to a two-decade battle with leukemia. Written with business partner John Scharffenberger, The Essence of Chocolate acknowledges Steinberg's bittersweet debt to the disease. For it was his diagnosis with the illness that drove the physician to apprentice himself to a small chocolatier in Lyon, to follow the trail of the cacao bean to Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, and, in 1996, to co-found Scharffen Berger. The Essence of Chocolate is an extraordinary book. It covers the history, cultivation, and lore of chocolate—and it does it in deft and lucid prose (before he was a doctor or a chocolate maker, Robert Steinberg was an English... More

Photograph from orphanjones on Flickr The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Hershey's will shut down the Scharffen Berger plant it acquired when it bought the brand from Scharffen Berger founders John Scharffenberger and the late Robert Steinberg in 2005. Serious eaters know how I feel about Steinberg, who died last year, and there can be no doubt how Robert would have felt about this. I remember having lunch with him right after the sale had gone through, and he articulated his many concerns about the plans Hershey's had for his beloved chocolate company. Scharffen Berger's longtime publicist Deborah Kwan weighed in on this topic in the Chronicle story: "It was home grown. They really changed the way people regarded... More

Dr. Robert Steinberg, 1947-2008 My friend Dr. Robert Steinberg, whose co-founding of Scharffen Berger Chocolates foreshadowed the chocolate revolution in this country, died Wednesday afternoon. He was 61. Robert had been fighting lymphatic cancer for nearly twenty years. In fact, it was his initial diagnosis that provided the impetus he needed to leave medicine and co-found Scharffen Berger Chocolates (along with his friend John Scharffenberger) in 1996. His flight from medicine to chocolate very much exemplified who Steinberg was—a lifelong searcher for meaning, truth, and relevance. I'm not sure that he ever found peace or fulfillment (searchers rarely do). But I can tell you with some certainty, after sharing quite a few meals with Robert over the years: he... More