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Title: ON FOOD AND COOKING by Harold McGee ISBN: 0684843285 Publisher: Fireside Pub. Date: February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.69
Rating: 5
Summary: Rigorous, but understandable.
Comment: This book is NOT a cookbook, but it's a damned good reference for figuring out why your sauce was flat.
I first received this book from a friend, about 3 years ago. I read it, then re-read it, and was amazed that the technical references and jargon were so easily described.
As a chemical engineer by trade and a cook by avocation, I loved this book, both for the technical details and the writing, as well as the explanations of the science behind the "obvious". If you're a technically-inclined person, you'll appreciate the references and notes. If you, like some unnamed previous reviewers, are looking for an easy guide to food, this isn't it. This book appeals to cooks who know how to make things, but want to know why those things are made. This isn't a compendium of recipes, nor is it a guide to cooking. It's an easily understandable review of why foods do what they do.
If you enjoy cooking and wonder why "browning" makes a tastier dish, get this book. Nothing here is a surprise to the seasoned cook. There are no de rigueur recipes. Whatever.
Rating: 5
Summary: On food chemistry
Comment: This is a remarkable book on why and how foods react the way they do. Though chemistry plays a large part in the understanding of food that McGee imparts (it has to), it is very basic and a short primer in the appendix tells you all you'll need to know. Because cooking and food underlie our very existence, and also because they are great sources of pleasure, the topic cannot but be fascinating. However, the mystification of food abounds, and the facts are hard for most people to verify. ON FOOD AND COOKING is a book that can be read straight through or as a reference, but will always increase your knowledge of how foods work.
It is comprehensive, historical, and scientific, and McGee's aim is to inform the reader enough so that s/he can cook, and also so that s/he can make decisions about food that are intelligent. Not only does he discuss pretty much any type of food you can think of, he also discusses artificial additives, nutrition, and digestion. And although the book was written in 1984, the advice he gives is always sound and cautious. Food is understandable. If you love watching PBS cooking shows, this book will enhance your knowledge of what the cooks are doing. If you love watching the food network... well, there is probably less to understand, but it will still enhance your viewing. In any case, if you love cooking and food, it is difficult to overlook a book of this magnitude.
Rating: 5
Summary: I eat, therefore I am
Comment: This book gives Totally Too Much Information (TTMI) to be read in one sitting. (Danger, Will Robinson! Information overload!) Like how one feels towards the end of Thanksgiving dinner! In a pinch, it may also be used to "boost" shorter members of the family up to the table ;-)
Mr. McGee's tome should be savored in digestible, bite-sized morsels. Read it while cooking up a big feast or nuking a quick snack. There is an excellent Index in which the reader may browse for specific items. As the author explains in the Introduction: "This is not a book of cookery - it offers no expert recipes - it is meant [to explain] the nature of our foods, what they are made of and where they came from, how they are transformed by cooking, when and why particular culinary habits took hold. Chemistry and biology figure prominently in this approach, but science is by no means the whole story. History, anthropology, and etymology also contribute to our understanding of food and cooking."
This is an essential treatise on the *science* - not art - of cooking. It explores *how* the traditional techniques (recipes and routines) work. We might have known the principle, but never put it together in the concept of Kitchen. For instance: that ugly "skin" when heating milk or reheating a cappuccino: "Whether fluid milk is used to make a soup or a sauce, scalloped potatoes or hot chocolate, the tendency of its proteins to coagulate can cause problems. The skin that forms on the surface of boiled milk or cream soups is a complex of casein and calcium and results from evaporation of water at the surface and the subsequent concentration of protein there."
To me, this is WAY more palatable than that Organic Chem 101 text with which I happily parted years ago. Better living through [cooking] chemistry!
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Title: The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore by Harold McGee ISBN: 0020098014 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 20 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained by Robert L. Wolke ISBN: 0393011836 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Science of Cooking by Peter Barham ISBN: 3540674667 Publisher: Springer Verlag Pub. Date: 08 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Cookwise : The Secrets of Cooking Revealed by Shirley Corriher ISBN: 0688102298 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition by Culinary Institute of America ISBN: 0471382574 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 05 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
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