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

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By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. There are no recipes and while it might be interesting to flip through once or twice, I can't imagine why I would ever need or want this book.

McGEE ON FOOD AND COOKING is a masterpiece of gastronomic writing; a rich, addictive blend of chemistry, history and anecdote that no self-respecting foodie or cook can afford to be without. While that would certainly work to improve your technique when looking up a specific ingredient, you'd miss out on a lot. There are handy little science class diagrams which help clarify and text boxes containing recipes, lore and writing hundreds of years old. I am curious about the chemistry, preparation and anthropology of food and McGee has all of those bases covered. On Food and Cooking continues to be the most accurate source of information for generations of chefs.His book On Food and Cooking has won numerous awards and is used widely in food science courses at many universities. McGee on Food and Cookery is an expanded version of Harold McGee's classic exploration of science in the kitchen. All homes could use a small shelf of reference books: the dictionary, an encyclopedia, a basic cookbook.

Organic vs processed is such a gross oversimplification, and means very different things from one type of food to the next. Throughout the book you will come across many descriptions of the evolution of techniques and equipment, the reasons for using certain techniques, the evolution of food technology etc. Practical information, like how to tell stale eggs from fresh, is liberally sprinkled amid the science and anecdotes.Once upon a time, I was expressing my frustration with books on cooking to a chemist friend -- primarily that most books on cooking treat cooking as this magical art. 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.

And it makes for a good reference book, if you ever feel like learning about some given food or cooking process. Plants as common as cabbage, lima beans, potatoes and lettuce have had some of their old wild, natural toxicity bred out of them. For example, he describes buffalo milk as being barnyardy and reminiscent of mushrooms and freshly-cut grass.However, I’ll keep my (much smaller) copy of the 1st edition, because I want to follow how McGee’s thinking has modified and changed over the twenty years between 1984 and 2004. This friend suggested that I hunt down something on the topic that approached things from a scientific perspective, and while looking I stumbled upon McGee. 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. Despite the fact that it took me nearly three months to read, I found just about every single page deeply informative and interesting.

Good cooking is honest, sincere and simple, and by this I do not mean to imply that you will find in this, or indeed in any other book, the secret of turning out first class food in a few minutes with no trouble. Is is not about cooking, but about why and how cooking works, about where the flavor is in the spices and why the tomato ripens, what makes a sauce a sauce instead of gravy or soup, and what nougat really is.If the OED had a one night stand with your O-Chem textbook while watching to food network, this would be their lovechild. This is a can't-put-it-down explanation of how cooking, pickling,preserving, fluffing, rising, kneading and all manner of other cooking techniques work. The writing is succinct but not tedious to follow, and every chapter packs in a spectrum of interesting facts. We cook them to draw out or disable more undesirable toxins and enzymes and to unlock nutrients, and we dilute toxins in the case of spices and herbs to the point where we find them enjoyable. There has been no book like this since Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, and there a few books so comprehensive, perspicuous or gracefully written on any subject.