On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

This red `On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen' by Harold McGee is a new edition of what is the most widely quoted culinary work in English. It may be almost as influential on the thinking of culinary professionals as Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' was on attitudes of American home cooking. The testimonials from the likes of Thomas Keller, Paula Wolfert, Jacques Pepin, and Rose Levy Beranbaum just begins to tell you how important McGee's volume has become. I was immensely pleased to see the exchange of acknowledgments between McGee and Keller to see how much the academic can learn from the professional chef. I can devote my thousand words on how good this book has been to the culinary world, but most of you already know that. What I will do is to list all the reasons one may wish to read this book. First, the book is simply interesting to amateur foodies and culinary professionals. This is the serendipity principle. If you prospect in a rich land, you will invariably find something of value. The `lore' in the subtitle is not an afterthought. The book includes history, linguistics and cooking practice in addition to simple science. In over 800 pages of densely packed narrative, one will invariably find something of interest, especially since the book covers such a broad range of topics, including: Milk and Dairy Eggs Meat Fish and Shellfish Fruits and Vegetables Seeds, Cereals, and Doughs Sauces Sugars and Chocolate Alcohol (Wine, Beer, and Distilled Spirits) Cooking Methods Cooking Utensil Materials `The Four Basic Food Molecules' Basic Chemistry This is the perfect book in which to jump around to those subjects that interest you. I just wish the author would have put the last two subjects first so that more readers would stumble across them to gain a better understanding of what appears in the chapters on specific foods. A quick example of how this would help in practical terms is that the characteristics of alcohol, which stand halfway between water and oils explains why vodka is such a great flavor enhancing addition to pasta sauces. Second, professional and amateur bakers should read all of the chapters on grains, doughs, chocolate, alcohol, basic molecules, and the chemistry primer, as this is the one area of culinary practice where knowledge of science can make the biggest difference between good and great results. Both Shirley Corriher and Alton Brown have books which include baking science and Rose Levy Beranbaum's books all cover practical baking science in depth, but McGee puts all of this is a broader context which, to use Alton Brown's great metaphor about science and cooking, gives a roadmap covering a much broader area, to a finer scale of detail. Third, all culinary professionals who have anything whatsoever to do with teaching should read this book from cover to cover, twice. There is absolutely nothing more annoying than having a person in the role of teacher make a patently false st

This is a truly unique and wonderful book. It contains a tremendous amount of information about the food we eat. It shows the structure and composition of animals, plants, eggs, liquids, and seeds, explaining why each one has certain characteristics (for example, it turns out that the smell of fish comes from the decomponsition of a chemical in ocean fish cells that maintains the proper pressure balance with salt water). It explains what happpens when ingredients are chopped, mixed, heated, cooled, fermented, or otherwise transformed. I discovered the first edition about five years ago, and it permanently changed how I think about food and how I cook. Since then, I've seen many other chefs mention this book. For example, in Michael Ruhlman's book "The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute," CIA students often study this (unrequired) book to better understand what they're doing. You should be aware that this book is more an encypclopedia than an a recipe book or a collection of essays. If you're looking for a fun discussion of food science, then Alton Brown's "I'm just here for the food" may be a better choice. If you're looking for recipes that are optimized by principles of food science, I'd recommend Shirley O. Corriher's "Cookwise." (Actually, I'd recommend both of those books anyway.) Some readers may find "On Food and Cooking" a little bit too dense and technical to read from cover to cover, but as a reference book, it's unmatched. The second edition is a great improvement over the first, and I'd strongly recommend it not only to new readers but to anyone who read the first edition. (Just the new section on fish makes this book worth purchasing.) This is really a totally new book: it's been completely reorganized, new illustrations have been added, and it's 66% longer than the old version. I'm guessing that the only reason that this book has the same title is for marketing value: the first book was very well known by cooks.

In 1984, when the first edition of ON FOOD AND COOKING was published, it sent off a shockwave through the entire culinary industry. Never before had someone published such a massive study on how science affects cooking in all aspects. It quickly became a bible for professional chefs around the world, often simply referred to in conversation as simply "McGee". For the 20th anniversary of the original publication, author McGee has rewritten about 90% of his original work, studying the various ways that the ensuing 20 years and the many advances affect the way we grow, harvest, cook, smell, taste, eat, and digest today. Taking all the culinary and scientific changes that have taken place since the original edition under consideration, McGee has once again created the standard for understanding the relationship between food and science, and why things work the way they do. He also addresses important topics such as irradiated food, the threats of disease such as Mad Cow disease, and the effects of aquaculture and genetic engineering on today's harvested food. The book also looks at the many various techniques of preparing everything from the odd vegetable to the many different fish in the ocean, and nearly everything in-between. McGee's historical and anecdotal style are easy to read, and more importantly, to understand. Once you've read a section, much of it will stay in your head, if only because the average cook will be saying to themselves, "Wow, I didn't know that!" Although McGee is not a household name among home cooks, it should be. Much of the information offered up by the author in his guide through the food jungle would be very useful to home cooks as well as professional chefs. I would definitely recommend the book to EVERYONE who has any kind of interest in how food science affects our everyday lives. A must-have for any library.

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.