McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture

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And it makes for a good reference book, if you ever feel like learning about some given food or cooking process. 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. The only thing I am not looking forward to is reaching the end of the book, so I have decided to read it a second and probably third time. But super interesting to dip into if, for example, you want to know how caramelization works, what the difference is between the fermentation of sake and beer, or how the compositions of cow, human, and whale milk compare. Cooking is too often about just following a recipe without ever really understanding why things are done.

According to GnuCash, I spent more money last year on cigarettes than groceries; changing that seems a noble enough objective. 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. It is heavy on chemistry (and its closing pages are a chemistry primer I wish I'd had in high school; read this first), but also patient explanations that a layperson / foodie will like: What is emulsification?And while it has not exactly unlocked the black art of cooking for me, it's a great resource book to have in the kitchen. On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen is a book by Harold McGee, published by Scribner in the United States in 1984 and revised extensively for a 2004 second edition.

Overall it will be a good read over winter, but feels like it has been through a photocopier on 75% or something. All homes could use a small shelf of reference books: the dictionary, an encyclopedia, a basic cookbook. Nothing could be more welcome than a revised and expanded verison of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. Quite in-depth and probably best suited to readers with a reasonable understanding of school science.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I am curious about the chemistry, preparation and anthropology of food and McGee has all of those bases covered. A kitchen classic for over 35 years, and hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn to 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.

I learned a lot about food and cooking food and feel this has already helped me become a better cook. Not only does he explain how every culinary reaction works, he also explores the history of everything we eat.I have been reading about cooking, and experimenting since I was a child, I own too many cookbooks to easily confess, and this is finally a book which puts things in context, which makes me understand the science of why this or that, put into cultural and historical context. Strictly speaking, then, there's very little you could say is purely 'natural' out there no matter where you look. It's 800 pages of all the tedious details about ingredients and cooking methods that you never wanted to know, and Harold McGee gets props for putting together these comprehensive tome. Among the major themes addressed throughout the 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.

Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. Ein gutes und umfangreiches Buch über alles essbare, wissenschaftlich angehaucht mit teils geschichtlichen Aspekten. 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. 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.Did you know that the cell walls of mushrooms aren’t made up of cellulose, like plants, but rather of chitin, the carbohydrate-amine complex that makes up the outer skeletons of insects? If you DO work your way through from beginning to end, and are serious about cooking, this will improve every aspect of your cooking. McGee on Food and Cookery is an expanded version of Harold McGee's classic exploration of science in the kitchen.