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On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (Hardcover)
by Harold McGee
| Category:
Cookbook, Gastronomic science, Culinary Arts & Techniques |
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¥ 368.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
The revised and updated twentieth anniversary edition of the classic "On Food And Cooking" features 90 percent new material, addressing the culinary mechanics, mysteries, and trends of the past 20 years. |
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Author: Harold McGee
Publisher: Scribner; Rev Upd edition
Pub. in: November, 2004
ISBN: 0684800012
Pages: 896
Measurements: 9.5 x 6.9 x 2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01075
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0684800011
Language: American English
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- Awards & Credential -
A classic tome of gastronomic science and lore, On Food and Cooking delivers an erudite discussion of table ingredients and their interactions with our bodies. Winner of the IACF cookbook Award. |
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- MSL Picks -
A stunning masterpiece that combines science, linguistics, history, poetry and, of course, gastronomy.
- Publishers Weekly (USA)
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- Better with -
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Harold McGee earned his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology and his doctorate in English Literature from Yale, where he subsequently taught. He now lives in Palo Alto, California, and writes about science.
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From Publisher
Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic. Hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they're made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious.
Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment.
On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the inventive culinary movement known as "molecular gastronomy." Though other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques.
Among the major themes addressed throughout this new edition are:
- Traditional and modern methods of food production and their influences on food quality
- The great diversity of methods by which people in different places and times have prepared the same ingredients
- Tips for selecting the best ingredients and preparing them successfully
- The particular substances that give foods their flavors and that give us pleasure
- Our evolving knowledge of the health benefits and risks of foods
On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.
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Introduction: Cooking and Science, 1984 and 2004
This is the revised and expanded second edition of a book that I first published in 1984, twenty long years ago. In 1984, canola oil and the computer mouse and compact discs were all novelties. So was the idea of inviting cooks to explore the biological and chemical insides of foods. It was a time when a book like this really needed an introduction!
Twenty years ago the worlds of science and cooking were neatly compartmentalized. There were the basic sciences, physics and chemistry and biology, delving deep into the nature of matter and life. There was food science, an applied science mainly concerned with understanding the materials and processes of industrial manufacturing. And there was the world of small-scale home and restaurant cooking, traditional crafts that had never attracted much scientific attention. Nor did they really need any. Cooks had been developing their own body of practical knowledge for thousands of years, and had plenty of reliable recipes to work with.
I had been fascinated by chemistry and physics when I was growing up, experimented with electroplating and Tesla coils and telescopes, and went to Caltech planning to study astronomy. It wasn't until after I'd changed directions and moved on to English literature -- and had begun to cook -- that I first heard of food science. At dinner one evening in 1976 or 1977, a friend from New Orleans wondered aloud why dried beans were such a problematic food, why indulging in red beans and rice had to cost a few hours of sometimes embarrassing discomfort. Interesting question! A few days later, working in the library and needing a break from 19th-century poetry, I remembered it and the answer a biologist friend had dug up (indigestible sugars), thought I would browse in some food books, wandered over to that section, and found shelf after shelf of strange titles. Journal of Food Science. Poultry Science. Cereal Chemistry. I flipped through a few volumes, and among the mostly bewildering pages found hints of answers to other questions that had never occurred to me. Why do eggs solidify when we cook them? Why do fruits turn brown when we cut them? Why is bread dough bouncily alive, and why does bounciness make good bread? Which kinds of dried beans are the worst offenders, and how can a cook tame them? It was great fun to make and share these little discoveries, and I began to think that many people interested in food might enjoy them. Eventually I found time to immerse myself in food science and history and write On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.
As I finished, I realized that cooks more serious than my friends and I might be skeptical about the relevance of cells and molecules to their craft. So I spent much of the introduction trying to bolster my case. I began by quoting an unlikely trio of authorities, Plato, Samuel Johnson, and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, all of whom suggested that cooking deserves detailed and serious study. I pointed out that a 19th-century German chemist still influences how many people think about cooking meat, and that around the turn of the 20th century, Fannie Farmer began her cookbook with what she called "condensed scientific knowledge" about ingredients. I noted a couple of errors in modern cookbooks by Madeleine Kamman and Julia Child, who were ahead of their time in taking chemistry seriously. And I proposed that science can make cooking more interesting by connecting it with the basic workings of the natural world.
A lot has changed in twenty years! It turned out that On Food and Cooking was riding a rising wave of general interest in food, a wave that grew and grew, and knocked down the barriers between science and cooking, especially in the last decade. Science has found its way into the kitchen, and cooking into laboratories and factories.
In 2004 food lovers can find the science of cooking just about everywhere. Magazines and newspaper food sections devote regular columns to it, and there are now a number of books that explore it, with Shirley Corriher's 1997 CookWise remaining unmatched in the way it integrates explanation and recipes. Today many writers go into the technical details of their subjects, especially such intricate things as pastry, chocolate, coffee, beer, and wine. Kitchen science has been the subject of television series aired in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. And a number of food molecules and microbes have become familiar figures in the news, both good and bad. Anyone who follows the latest in health and nutrition knows about the benefits of antioxidants and phytoestrogens, the hazards of trans fatty acids, acrylamide, E. coli bacteria, and mad cow disease.
Professional cooks have also come to appreciate the value of the scientific approach to their craft. In the first few years after On Food and Cooking appeared, many young cooks told me of their frustration in trying to find out why dishes were prepared a certain way, or why ingredients behave as they do. To their traditionally trained chefs and teachers, understanding food was less important than mastering the tried and true techniques for preparing it. Today it's clearer that curiosity and understanding make their own contribution to mastery. A number of culinary schools now offer "experimental" courses that investigate the whys of cooking and encourage critical thinking. And several highly regarded chefs, most famously Ferran Adrià in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England, experiment with industrial and laboratory tools - gelling agents from seaweeds and bacteria, non-sweet sugars, aroma extracts, pressurized gases, liquid nitrogen - to bring new forms of pleasure to the table.
As science has gradually percolated into the world of cooking, cooking has been drawn into academic and industrial science. One effective and charming force behind this movement was Nicholas Kurti, a physicist and food lover at the University of Oxford, who lamented in 1969: "I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés." In 1992, at the age of 84, Nicholas nudged civilization along by organizing an International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy at Erice, Sicily, where for the first time professional cooks, basic scientists from universities, and food scientists from industry worked together to advance gastronomy, the making and appreciation of foods of the highest quality.
The Erice meeting continues, renamed the "International Workshop on Molecular Gastronomy 'N. Kurti' " in memory of its founder. And over the last decade its focus, the understanding of culinary excellence, has taken on new economic significance. The modern industrial drive to maximize efficiency and minimize costs generally lowered the quality and distinctiveness of food products: they taste much the same, and not very good. Improvements in quality can now mean a competitive advantage; and cooks have always been the world's experts in the applied science of deliciousness. Today, the French National Institute of Agricultural Research sponsors a group in Molecular Gastronomy at the Collège de France (its leader, Hervé This, directs the Erice workshop); chemist Thorvald Pedersen is the inaugural Professor of Molecular Gastronomy at Denmark's Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University; and in the United States, the rapidly growing membership of the Research Chefs Association specializes in bringing the chef's skills and standards to the food industry.
So in 2004 there's no longer any need to explain the premise of this book. Instead, there's more for the book itself to explain! Twenty years ago, there wasn't much demand for information about extra-virgin olive oil or balsamic vinegar, farmed salmon or grass-fed beef, cappuccino or white tea, Sichuan pepper or Mexican mole, sake or well-tempered chocolate. Today there's interest in all these and much more. And so this second edition of On Food and Cooking is substantially longer than the first. I've expanded the text by two thirds in order to cover a broader range of ingredients and preparations, and to explore them in greater depth. To make room for new information about foods, I've dropped the separate chapters on human physiology, nutrition, and additives. Of the few sections that survive in similar form from the first edition, practically all have been rewritten to reflect fresh information, or my own fresh understanding.
This edition gives new emphasis to two particular aspects of food. The first is the diversity of ingredients and the ways in which they're prepared. These days the easy movement of products and people makes it possible for us to taste foods from all over the world. And traveling back in time through old cookbooks can turn up forgotten but intriguing ideas. I've tried throughout to give at least a brief indication of the range of possibilities offered by foods themselves and by different national traditions. |
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| View all 10 comments |
Bobby Flay, chef-co-owner of Mesa Grill and Bolo and author of Bobby Flay's Boy Gets Grill, USA
<2007-11-25 00:00>
Harold McGee has once again done the work and research for us all. Any culinary question is now easily answered in On Food and Cooking. It's virtually the 'tell me why' for adults in the kitchen. |
Shirley O. Corriher, author of CookWise (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-25 00:00>
Harold McGee changed our lives with his original On Food and Cooking. While we knew that many things in cooking worked or didn't work, McGee showed us why. This new edition is the most complete book on food that I have ever seen, and it is easy to read-an inconceivable amount of information made incredibly accessible. On Food and Cooking is unique, engrossing reading and a major contribution to great culinary literature. |
Charlie Trotter, chef-owner of Charlie Trotter's , USA
<2007-11-25 00:00>
Without an understanding of basic food science and practical cooking technique, there can ultimately be no true creativity in the kitchen! Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is the definitive treatise on this subject that both the professional and home cook will absolutely require to move their cooking forward. |
Rick Bayless, author of Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen and Mexico One Plate at a Time , USA
<2007-11-25 00:00>
A must-have resource for any student of the stove, On Food and Cooking synthesizes details from a wide variety of scientific disciplines and gastronomic traditions, sparking the reader's culinary imagination with every turn of the page. Harold McGee possesses that most rare combination: a scientist's skill and a cook's heart. |
View all 10 comments |
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