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. But, fear not if you don’t have a science back ground: the book is so well written that this is not important: just stick with it. For example, he describes buffalo milk as being barnyardy and reminiscent of mushrooms and freshly-cut grass. Practical information, like how to tell stale eggs from fresh, is liberally sprinkled amid the science and anecdotes.

On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped birth the inventive culinary movement known as "molecular gastronomy. When I ruined cream sauce by cooking it at a too hot temperature (so that instead of thickening, the cream just broke down into water and oil), I thought I needed to know a little more about exactly what was going on when I cooked. If the OED had a one night stand with your O-Chem textbook while watching to food network, this would be their lovechild.For its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. Cooking is too often about just following a recipe without ever really understanding why things are done. If you DO work your way through from beginning to end, and are serious about cooking, this will improve every aspect of your cooking.

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. Despite the fact that it took me nearly three months to read, I found just about every single page deeply informative and interesting.McGEE ON FOOD AND COOKING renders the everyday miracles of the kitchen wondrous and fascinating, shedding light on questions that have puzzled generations of cooks.

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. 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. Strictly speaking, then, there's very little you could say is purely 'natural' out there no matter where you look. How does the Maillard reaction work, and why is it the greatest thing to hit the culinary art since well before sliced bread?I found the author's writing style to be a little too flowery, but it may just be that I am not enough of a food connoisseur to understand some of his descriptions. Interesting tidbits McGee's has taught me: raw pineapple will curdle milk, but cooked pineapple will not.

He has worked alongside some of world's most innovative chefs, including Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal. 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. If you cannot handle information purveyed to you in a dry, textbook-like manner this is not the book for you. Harold McGee's original ON FOOD AND COOKING was acclaimed as a masterpiece on both sides of the Atlantic, and won the 1986 Andre Simon Food Book of the Year.Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. McGee's scientific approach to cooking has been embraced and popularized by chefs and authors such as Heston Blumenthal, David Chang, Alton Brown, Shirley Corriher, Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Russ Parsons. 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.