Satire generally instructs by counter-example, presenting an exaggerated model of behavior in an unflattering light, and serving as a warning to readers who might be headed in that direction. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” for example, lays out a scheme whereby poor Irish mothers might better their situation by raising babies for the English to eat. Theoretically, English landlords would read Swift’s pamphlet, recognize their own cruel treatment of their Irish tenants, and by treating them better, move away from Swift’s portrait of them.

Kamp’s series nominally works this way; a rock snob might cringe in self-recognition on reading the entry for Brian Wilson and see a reflection of his own snobbish pronouncements on “Pet Sounds” as the greatest artistic accomplishment of the 20th century. At the same time, by providing aspiring snobs with the requisite vocabulary, the books also work to promote the same behavior they ridicule. For instance, a practicing food snob can pick up “The Food Snob’s Dictionary” and recognize that it was bad manners to ask last weekend’s brunch hosts if the bacon was Niman Ranch; an aspiring food snob can pick up the same book and learn that Niman Ranch is a name to reckon with in the world of meat.

Kamp’s new “Food Snob’s Dictionary” (coauthored by Marion Rosenfeld) appears at a moment when food snobbery is rampant. Adjectives like “artisanal” and “house-made” appear on menus, stoves can cost more than a year at Bennington, and diners gossip online about sous chefs as if they were rock stars. Kamp has a rich vein of material to mine. But as he uses the word, “snob” does not carry the negative connotation it has in real life — it means something close to “connoisseur,” even if it is the kind of connoisseurs whose refined tastes make them a burden to their less evolved friends.

By targeting two distinct kinds of readers — those who read one of the Snob’s Dictionaries to learn the information it contains, and those who read it to congratulate themselves that they already know it — Kamp is following a trail blazed by his fellow Spy magazine alum Lisa Birnbach. Birnbach’s 1980 “The Official Preppy Handbook” is the ur-document of aspirational satire. It purported to ridicule a way of life, but it also offered anxious teens from the hinterlands preparing for their first year at Colby or Vassar a guide to the Bermuda bags and Nantucket Reds they would need to blend in.

Kamp (also author of “The United States of Arugula”) and Rosenfeld know the terrain of the food snob well enough to reach both kinds of readers. They write with knowledge and enthusiasm, but maintain the perspective that allows them to see the follies of the food world. Ruth Reichl, for instance, is a “Prodigiously maned gastro-sensualist and writer, known for a trilogy of memoirs … that chart her Zelig-like journey through various food-mad locales … as they experienced their signal moments in America’s culinary coming of age. Though prone to onanistic, self-aggrandizing prose and batty flights of fancy — wearing unnecessarily elaborate disguises while visiting restaurants, frequently invoking her dead mother as a speaking character in reviews — Reichl has more than creditably served as editor of Gourmet since 1999.”

These biographies are the most entertaining part of the book; the entry for Julia Child mentions that she was “a bawdy, fiercely liberal, whip-smart intellectual who partied harder than Anthony Bourdain.” The more useful entries are for individual ingredients, and here, Kamp and Rosenfeld do some demystifying: cepe is “a cloying French synonym for porcini mushroom, used on menus to confuse diners who think porcinis are old news.”

Beyond what is included in “The Food Snob’s Dictionary,” for real snobs a good deal of the fun of these books is seeing what is not in them. Cookbook author Elizabeth David, “who turned out two masterworks, ‘Italian Food’ (1954) and ‘French Provincial Cooking’ (1960), which though sometimes vague and imprecise in their recipes, neatly evoked a sun-dappled Southern European wonderland,” gets an entry, but her more Anglo-centric counterpart, Jane Grigson, does not. For snobs keen to make their own fromage de tête, Grigson’s out-of-print “The Art of Charcuterie” is the go-to reference. The less ambitious snob will make do with the recipe from snob darling Fergus Henderson’s “The Whole Beast.” Entry-level snobs will settle for the recipe in Ruhlman & Polcyn’s “Charcuterie,” which happens to be the most comprehensive and precise of these three books. Those snobs who celebrated when a university press began reissuing Grigson’s cookbooks will be frosted by her absence, but pleased to have out-snobbed the snobs.