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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Before antioxidants, extra-virgin olive oil and supermarket sushi commanded public obsession, the first edition of this book swept readers and cooks into the everyday magic of the kitchen: it became an overnight classic. Now, 20 years later, McGee has taken his slightly outdated volume and turned it into a stunning masterpiece that combines science, linguistics, history, poetry and, of course, gastronomy. He dances from the spicy flavor of Hawaiian seaweed to the scientific method of creating no-stir peanut butter, quoting Chinese poet Shu Xi and biblical proverbs along the way. McGee's conversational style—rich with exclamation points and everyday examples—allows him to explain complex chemical reactions, like caramelization, without dumbing them down. His book will also be hailed as groundbreaking in its breakdown of taste and flavor. Though several cookbooks have begun to answer the questions of why certain foods go well together, McGee draws on recent agricultural research, neuroscience reviews and chemical publications to chart the different flavor chemicals in herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables. Odd synergies appear, like the creation of fruity esters in dry-cured ham—the same that occur naturally in melons! McGee also corrects the European bias of the first edition, moving beyond the Mediterranean to discuss the foods of Asia and Mexico. Almost every single page of this edition has been rewritten, but the book retains the same light touch as the original. McGee has successfully revised the bible of food science—and produced a fascinating, charming text.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* In the two decades since McGee's On Food and Cooking (1984) first appeared, it has reigned as the standard authority on gastronomical science, that area where science and art, technique, and aesthetics intersect. For the benefit of consumers everywhere, McGee has carefully revised and updated his magisterial achievement, adding new data from the latest scientific discoveries and reformatting the text to enhance its appeal to eyes grown accustomed to hypertext. This revised content encompasses such newly popular fruits as the Meyer lemon and the carambola. Recently marketed vegetables such as romanesco and arracacha appear. A table of descriptors for accurately categorizing aromas given off by fruits and vegetables rivals the controlled vocabulary established for wine. For the librarian, McGee provides useful, readily accessible information about individual foods, both animal and vegetable, cooking and preserving processes, and the chemistry and physics underlying them. For the armchair reader, McGee's prose style flowers into narrative text that makes every egg, every nut, every vegetable, every steak, and every spice a character in the intriguing, involving story of what we eat. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
What better subject for the first chapter than the food with which we all begin our lives? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
What better subject for the first chapter than the food with which we all begin our lives? Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great detail!,
By
This review is from: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (Hardcover)
This book was even better than I expected. The amount of detail on every subject is very impressive. I like seeing the scientific side of the cooking and my boyfriend loved it for the new culinary ideas.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding review of ingredients and techniques for the serious creative cook/chef,
By The Hungry Reader (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (Hardcover)
This book was recommended to me a friend -- the executive chef of a restaurant recently rated the best restaurant in a large city. I live in a small tourist town with many outstanding restaurants and chefs who rate McGee (as it is affectionately known) as an essential reference in any serious kitchen.For someone with a serious, creative, interest in the hows and whys of the culinary arts and sciences, I would suggest a thorough cover-to-cover read-through to know what's there and to gain basic knowledge. The book then should be kept at hand as a frequent reference for creative ideas, solutions to failures, and how to achieve desired results with ingredients and techniques. I've given four copies as gifts to other serious cooks/chefs and they found that, once started, they couldn't put it down until they got to the end. A creative cook will find that their copy of McGee becomes more stained and battered than any conventional recipe book on the shelf.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Favourite Culinary Book,
By
This review is from: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (Hardcover)
This is the ultimate reference book on the science of food and cooking. I've always had many questions about why food is the way it is, and thanks to this book, I have a much clearer understanding of how my favourite cheese is made, why different spice combinations work or don't work, why white meat is white and red meat red, and on and on. It's really thick, so I simply leave it at the dinner table and read about what I'm eating. One day, I hope to get through it all. If you have the food-geek gene, then I think you'll probably enjoy this book.
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