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Product Details
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Product Description
Review
"I think Harold McGee has single-handedly contributed to modern cuisine like no other person has. We constantly look to him for guidance and information as we continue to grow as cooks and explore new techniques. In his new book, Keys to Good Cooking, he provides us with clear and definite answers to all our why questions, when in the past we were just told or taught to do things a certain way. Harold has given us a true understanding of the interaction foods have with one another--he is the most important authority on the subject."
—Thomas Keller, The French Laundry and Per Se
Book Description
A requisite countertop companion for all home chefs, Keys to Good Cooking distils the modern scientific understanding of cooking and translates it into immediately useful information. The book provides simple statements of fact and advice, along with brief explanations that help cooks understand why, and apply that understanding to other situations. Not a cookbook, Keys to Good Cooking is, simply put, a book about how to cook well. A work of astounding scholarship and originality, this is a concise and authoritative guide designed to help home cooks navigate the ever-expanding universe of recipes and ingredients and appliances, and arrive at the promised land of a satisfying dish.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bedtime reading for foodies,
By
This review is from: Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (Hardcover)
Excellent reference tool. This book offers comprehensive information about the science and art of preparing food. With attention given to both the foodstuffs and the equipment used to prepare them, all readers are bound to learn something new. Further, reading this book will allow one to better evaluate recipes so that fewer "new tries" end up in the garbage disposal. McGee's offering would be a welcome gift by all those who enjoy cooking....or eating.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Keys to good cooking: A guide to Making the Best of Foods & Recipes,
This review is from: Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (Hardcover)
An excellent book - there's so much information and in the short time it has been in our house, we have referred to it frequently. It would make a perfect gift for anyone learning to cook and also for long time cooks. It would make a wonderful birthday or wedding present
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews) 97 of 105 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A solid reference -,
By Andrea Gillin - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (Hardcover)
Having read and purchased McGee's other titles I did not expect this one to be terribly different. That is to say that his books tend to be chock full of information without many pictures. I consider myself an experienced cook and baker, and still find this information very helpful when a question arises about why something happens in cooking the way that it does. If you are the type that prefers lots of pictures, even humor, then Alton Brown is probably your best go to source. Although McGee himself is not without humor - it was the famous scene from "Blazing Saddles" that sent him in this direction food science, but this book is pretty cut and dry. On the front jacket cover the chapters and their contents are listed nos. 1-24, breaking down the subject matter from 'Basic Kitchen Resources' to 'Nuts and Oil Seeds' and much more. I, however, prefer to judge a book by its index and this book has a decent one. Whoever handled the indexing for this title did a fairly thorough job, but missed the boat by not cross-referencing, which I personally think is critical in a book of this nature. Maybe that was a decision on the publisher's part rather than the indexer, but I feel like something's missing. All in all, this is an excellent reference. If you're like me and consider Hester Blumenthal's "In Search of Perfection" your idea of leisure reading then this book will be right up your alley. If not, use it strictly as a reference, because I don't think any decent cookbook collection should be without McGee's books!
128 of 144 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
By Jackal - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (Hardcover)
I really liked the author's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which is a five star book. That book was more detailed about food than cooking, so there was definitely room for improvement on the cooking side. However, this is not really what his new book accomplishes. Instead, in my mind, it is a dumbed down version of the old book (i.e all science and explanation of why is totally gone). It is organised around different cooking tasks, like making meringues and cooking rice, and you do get more direct advice than in the author's previous book. This is all good. Sadly, the book is mostly targeted to the eager-to-learn novice or the less experienced. If you have cooked for a couple of years and read the author's previous book, you are likely to find the simple stuff quite tedious. I advice you look at chefs that are also good technicians, Pepin comes to mind. There you will learn tons of useful stuff. A scientist trying to provide similar advice is borderline ridiculous. You will find several entries in which you don't learn anything new. Check out the three short video tips that are posted on top by amazon. If you find these three examples really useful, you should probably buy the book.The above could have been forgiven, if the book had a decent layout. The old book was crammed with information and had a well-suited typographical layout. The current book has wide margins, spacious line spacing and quite a large font size, not to mention the puke greenish-blue highlights. We get something that looks like it went straight from Microsoft Word to the printing press; loads of italic and bold, bullets with huge indents... I do not understand the publisher's thinking at all. It is not a coffee table book, because it has no pictures and is full of practical advice. It is not a practical tool to have in the kitchen because it is thick as a brick. For some reason, the publisher made the book as bulky as possible. With the same layout as the old book, the number of pages would shrink with 60% percent. The following doesn't really apply to this book, but since my review is featured, it might be helpful to you dear reader: If you want more information about cooking (as opposed to ingredients) than is found in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, I highly recommend Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. 42 of 45 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent summary of his previous works,
By Dr Garry - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (Hardcover)
I'm going to disagree with some other reviewers here. I have been been reading Mr McGee for many years, and regard myself as a huge fan.Few of his previous works would be suitable for the everyday cook. This one is. How many people would wade through his earlier erudite discussions of protein strings, just to get a practical morsel for the kitchen? Few indeed. This is a book that distills Mr McGee's work into a single practical volume. It may be "the size of a brick", but so what? Nor do I find the typography and layout disconcerting. I think they are ideal: they send you to the essential points immediately. I have sent this book to some of my friends who would never read even think to peruse Mr McGee's previous opuses. But I am sure they will at least leaf through this one. |
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