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

• Definitive Text on Food Science AND Lore. Buy It.

  
  By A20IIR0422G3A5 on 2004-12-03
  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 statement in their area of expertise. The number of times a Food Network culinary celeb misuses the term `dissolve' when they really mean `emulsify' or simply `mix' would fill volumes. It is still a common mistake to say that searing protein seals in juices. There are many good reasons for searing. Preventing the escape of liquid is not one of them. Even Brown himself has made some gaffs in print and on `Good Eats' such as when he described a very corrosive compound as a strong acid rather than a strong base. He confused one end of the pH scale with the other.
  
  Fourth, anyone who has ambitions to develop their own recipes should read those chapters which deal with the major foods such as dairy, meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables, with a premium on the material on milk and eggs. Two defining characteristics of science are that it explains things and it predicts things. Most people understand the first but may not appreciate the second. One can predict, for example, that if you use too little fat in a milk or cream based gratin, the dairy will curdle, so, if you are playing around with your favorite mac and cheese recipe, do not be so quick to reach for that skim milk, as you are likely to be very disappointed with the result. Similarly, if you crave some Saturday morning buttermilk biscuits and the nearest carton of buttermilk is a 30 minute drive away, AND, you have no vinegar, AND you have no citrus, there is just a chance that your aging cream of tartar dissolved in milk will save the day, since this is an acidic salt which will stand in for the acidity in the buttermilk. As a former professional chemist, I can assure you that pure inorganic salts like cream of tartar simply do not go bad.
  
  I would have loved to hear the exchanges between author McGee and Thomas Keller, as Keller is probably the contemporary epitome of how the culinary professional uses experimental techniques in cooking. The constant tasting which every cook does is nothing more than a practical application of the chemical technique of titration, where materials are combined slowly until the desired result is achieved. What separates good from great cooks is using this technique to test raw materials. This is the truest marriage of science and cooking, following the maxim of Daniel Boulud who stated that to be really great, the journeyman cook must repeat the same procedure thousands of times to the point where the result is utterly reproducible and the cook can detect the desired endpoint easily by eye, nose, and mouth. Sounds like science to me.
  
  The author's introduction presents an excellent case for rereading the book in its second edition as he cites the great changes in food culture over the last twenty years. This is also a great case for anyone who is interested in any aspect of food.
  
  A very important book indeed.
  
  
  

• the new and improved bible of food and cooking

  
  By A3856FA2O4FXXF on 2004-12-02
  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.
  
  

• Rigorous, but understandable.

  
  By on 1999-09-10
  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.
  
  

• The "Lore" obscures the "Science", and vice-versa

  
  By AYSWADHW28S1A on 2001-09-11
  The many flaws in this book originally led me to give it 3 stars, but the more I look at other sources for the same information, the more I realize that for all its annoying qualities, this book really does appear to be the most comprehensive work on this subject. As such, I have to recommend it more highly, simply because you're not going to get the same infomation in any other single book. Be prepared to work hard for the knowledge, however.

  "On Food and Cooking" is a very comprehensive work that contains a lot of very useful and interesting information. It also contains a lot of less useful information, random historical musings, and general digressions. As a result, the useful/interesting information density is much lower than I'd like, particularly given the general "verbiage density" of the text. Perhaps part of the problem is that I've gleaned too much of the information already from other sources, so that I feel like I'm wading through a lot of common knowledge to get to the bits I care about.

  The book goes into a fair amount of historical detail about various ingredients. It doesn't focus on the historical aspects enough to be a "history of food" book, though, and the historical perspective tends to detract from the scientific content ratio simply by increasing the overall amount of text.

  Also, there are many variations on ingredients, food safety issues, etc., that were not considered significant in 1983, but which are more relevant today. There's no discussion of salmonella in the section on eggs, for example, and no discussion of things like the impact (or lack thereof) of RBGH on milk quality. The effects of organic methods in general are given short shrift. I have observed various quality differences in organic ingredients relative to more conventional ingredients (both for better and for worse), and had hoped for some quantitative discussion of what the physical differences are, and why.

  Compared to "The Science of Cooking" (my most recent read on the topic), this book doesn't cover some of the physics and organic chemistry as well, but it does go into better detail on some of the more biologically oriented topics. For example, osmotic pressure, the process by which salt and sugar preserve food, is covered fairly well in this book, while it is never directly mentioned in "The Science of Cooking".

  I also wish there had been better organization of the material in the book. "The Science of Cooking", for example, is organized like a textbook, with well-marked side bars and tables, allowing you to easily skip to (or over) information that may or may not be relevant. "On Food and Cooking", however, is organized more like a novel, making it difficult to use it for reference, and complicating efforts to skip over material that is not of interest.

  Also, some sections (for example the discussion of cheese) assume too much knowledge about the basic processes, making it sometimes challenging to correlate the underlying chemistry with actual kitchen mechanics. In general, the book has very few examples of "kitchen experiments" you can try yourself to develop an integrated sense of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of cooking. There are many discussions, for example, of the effects of pH on various processes, but little discussion of ways to manipulate the pH using different ingredients to help balance flavor against the needs of the chemical processes.

  I still haven't found the ideal source for this sort of information. "The Science of Cooking" is at least concise and very clear in what it does cover (which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 3), but as I look back and compare it to "On Food and Cooking" again, I see some of the major holes in that book (which doesn't deal with the role of pH in cooking at all, for example). And so, my search continues.
  
  

• McGee has outdone himself again

  
  By A2FI4N8A2OWS8 on 2004-11-28
  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.
  
  
  
• Not for the dabbler
  By A13OQI8TW3C3CU on 2007-02-18
  This is an exhaustive, technical dense treatise on the chemistry and physics of cooking. It is pretty readable and quite well suited for an academic approach. I bought it thinking it to be something closer to a lengthy, general purpose magazine article on how food changes in preparation and found myself with more than I'd bargained for. It is a fine representation of what it is, but too specific and lengthy for a casual reader such as myself. For the serious chef or chemistry student, tho, it cannot be faulted.
  
  
• The Foodie's Bible, Colorful and Endlessly Fascinating
  By A13E0ARAXI6KJW on 2004-12-11
  Food lovers can rest easy now that Harold McGee has updated his eminently readable 1984 tome, "On Food and Cooking". He is the literary counterpart to the Food Network's Alton Brown in providing an amalgam of history, science, literature, and cooking tips, spreading his knowledge across fifteen chapters, each devoted to a different food category. McGee leaves no food unturned. He starts rather appropriately with milk and dairy products, life-starting foods, and goes through edible plants, cereals, doughs and batters, wine and beer and distilled spirits, even basic food molecules. This is no dry scientific book, as McGee is a wonderfully colorful writer, lucid and endlessly fascinating.
  
  McGee is truly a Renaissance man when it comes to food, and the book is packed with historical facts, literary anecdotes, and food legends passed down through the ages. For instance, when he talks about dairy products in the first chapter, he also brings up the domestication of the goat, the development of Parmesan, the history of ice cream and the best way to clarify butter. But his writing style is never contrived or pedantic and never gets in the way of the intriguing facts he brings to light. There are great illustrations and almost like a textbook, replete with easy-to-follow charts, graphs, and pictures, On the sidebars of each page, McGee shares insights from the likes of Brillat-Savarin, Plutarch and their culinary brethren along with ancient recipes for ash-roasted eggs, stuffed bonito with pennyroyal, and other delicacies. However, his focus is not purely historical, as he examines with great acuity, modern food production, current health risks and an easy-to-understand lesson on atoms, molecules, and the nature of energy. Rest assured that cooking basics are covered thoroughly. Would-be bakers can know what to expect with flour and why it behaves the way it does. Carnivores will discover what makes a tender stew or why it's such a delicate art to roast the perfect turkey. Even the seemingly trivial jumps off the page, for example, the fact that completely different cultures can produce such similar foods like kimchi and sauerkraut. Or one can realize that it takes 70,000 crocus flowers and 200 hours of labor to produce one pound of saffron. Only with this detail can one appreciate the exorbitant cost when you see it in the supermarket.
  
  It's as if McGee has taken David Macaulay's wonderful book, "The Way Things Work", traded machinery for sustenance and mixed it all in a food processor to come up with an essential reference book one can read with pleasure and for education concurrently. Strongly recommended even for the non-food lover if such a creature exists.
  
  
• Nonpareil food reference
  By AJ1D582MPDLF1 on 2004-12-15
  McGee is the doyen of kitchen chemistry. As proof, look at the blurbs on the back cover from such as Kerrer, Kamman, Boulud, Corriher, and other culinary luminaries. I have been using the first edition for twenty years; this one is much more complete and incorporates much food science discovered in the last two decades. You can use it as reference, but since I got it I have just been reading it like a novel, except that you don't have to read it in any order. Despite being an accomplished amateur cook, I found myself repeatedly exclaiming "So that's why......!" as I perused the various chapters. The last two chapters, an introduction to chemistry and primers to the fours major food substances (water, lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins) is the very best brief written summary of these topics I have ever seen.
  I could exhaust my thesaurus finding synonyms for "paragon" to describe this book, but just buy it, read it, and enjoy it.
  
  
• Deep knowledge...too deep.
  By A3VNNU0U3188HB on 2002-07-17
  I enjoy cooking. I like science. I wanted to introduce the two. After reading "the making of a chef" (Ruhlman) where McGee's book is one of the 3 bibles, I had to get it. I read for about a week, got to page 100-something, and got a bit tired of it. I'm no idiot, and my knowledge in chemistry is pretty good, but sometimes the book would just bore me abit. A bit too much science and too little of how the science affects the cooking. I would want more of "why the thick crust bread is thick" and "beat your egg-whites with a cold beater" (cooking science tips) and less molecule explanations.
  
  
• Curious Cook, Sloppy Writer
  By A2K33VWYQC9C2W on 2005-06-17
  This rather legendary book is food science for the non-scientifically minded person. It is extremely entertaining, but the reader is obliged to take the information in the book with a rather large grain of salt. This book is an entertaining blend of fact, fiction, and pop science. It is an interesting and entertaining read, as long as one does not take its information too literally. Reading this book is quite enjoyable, if you do not take it too seriously. The writing is friendly, chatty, and very approachable. It might be safer to regard this book as a quaint and entertaining collection of stories, rumor, pop science, and old wives tales rather than a serious scientific or culinary resource.
  
  There are many sections were one may dispute with the author, but this review is limited to 1000 words:
  1) The historical material is a collection of old wives tales, apocryphal stories, conventional wisdom, and culinary hearsay. Some of it is demonstrably wrong, but not any more so than other cookbooks that try to illuminate culinary history. The author is skating on thin ice much of the time.
  2) the origin of the word "mold" (as in cheese) is not the Latin "aerugo", but the Old Norse word "mygla" and the Swedish "mogel". Had the author bothered to check the OED, he would have discovered his error.
  3) many claims (adding salt makes scrambled eggs cook faster), especially in the egg chapter, have obviously not been tested by the author, making most of the scientific claims of dubious practical value.
  4) the section "Meat in the Human Diet" degenerates into political twaddle.
  5) the section on meat cookery is pitifully short and uninformative.
  6) the brief section on chemical leavening is a reasonably straight forward subject that is poorly explained and only partially correct.
  7) The last 2 sections on food science and physiology (along with the appendix that tries to explain basic chemistry) demonstrates pop science at its worst: inaccurate and not terribly illuminating. Those with a BS degree will cringe at the author's genuine lack of scientific understanding.
  8) the last chapter on cooking methods and utensil materials is disappointingly inaccurate, brief, and lacking in practical value.
  9) the section on lactose intolerance is downright wrong.
  
  The author's style is especially troubling:
  1) the author could have used the services of a good editor, as much of the writing is verbose, poorly disciplined, and lacking in focus.
  2) trying to decipher the real meaning of some of the author's paragraphs can be fun, especially for students of the English language.
  3) "authoritative" is not one of the words I would use to describe this book.
  4) Much of the information can be easily had in standard food science and botany textbooks (but, of course, these can be expensive).
  5) the information is not footnoted, making verification difficult
  
  There were a few bright spots:
  1) a spot checked on the etymology revealed that it is mostly correct.
  2) the science is mostly correct and occasionally enlightening
  3) it was written in 1984, so some information (especially relating to things found in the grocery store) is obsolete. The author has since updated this book.
  4) the extensive coverage of food subjects makes the phrase "comprehensive" an apt one.
  5) criticisms aside, I enjoyed reading this 630 page tome for its entertainment value (but not as a fountain of impeachable information), much as one reads a Shakespeare play. The scanning electron microscope pictures were particularly interesting.
  6) the chapter on alcohol is unusually focused and well-written. One suspects that it was carefully crafted and published before the book.
  
  Part 1 on Foods (500 pages) has chapters on: dairy, eggs, meat, fruit and vegetables, grains, bread, sauces, sweets, alcohol, and additives. Part 2 on human physiology (60 pages) has chapters on: nutrition and digestion. Part 3 on cooking principles (50 pages) has chapters on: food molecules, and cooking methods and utensils. The appendix (15 pages) is a chemistry primer.
  
  
  
• What does a chemistry PhD read his to kid at bedtime.
  By A1D391G9OX0FI5 on 2005-02-12
  I bought this book as a birthday present for my husband, a former chemist and sometimes gourmet cook. He had enjoyed the original version of this book and also liked the Curious Cook. I heard that the revised edition was significantly updated, so I got it for him right away. I figured that he would periodically read chapters on his own. Here is what surprised me: It has become the bedtime story book for our almost 10 year old son. I knew that my husband would like it, so I excitedly showed it to my youngest son. He perusing it himself. Of course he did not understand much of it without lengthy explanations. So my husband started to read it to him, explaining the obscure parts. I thought that my son would get bored after a couple of nights of this, but they have been at it for quite a while and my son has not asked to switch books.
  
  The author covers a wide variety of types of foods and food issues. It starts with seections based on food types. Milk and milk products are the first. Once you read about the chemical, physical and aesthetic properties of a food, you want to go out and try the foods or food combinations yourself.
  
  The revised edition is significantly different from the original. If you are the type of person who likes the science behind food, you will probably also be the type who cares whether your information is up to date. If you are more of a chemistry dilettante like me, you will appreciate the interesting writing style and the relevance to current cooking and nutrition issues. If you are a science-oriented 10 year old, you will enjoy telling your classmates and teachers lurid details about what they are currently chewing. Since you can cloak these lurid details in legitimate basic science, the teachers generally have to let you keep talking.
  
  This book explains the "why" of the way ingredients mix together to make a tasty or unpalatable food. While this is not a recipe cookbook, the author does provide valuable information on how to choose and store foods to ensure the best quality. Understanding the basic principles of food chemistry enables a cook to improvise and sometimes sustitute ingredients. It explains how the different constitutents of milk influence the milk's properties. This in turn helps explain how we arrive at different properties of cheeses. the author takes you from the overall look of the food down to the molecular level.
  
  The book helps one understand food safety and spoilage. Advances in our understanding of food safety are reflected in this book.
  
  In sum, I recommend this book for erudite cooks and chemists, as well as diletanttes (like me) who want to know more about selected foods. I would not recommend this as bedtime reading for most 10 year olds, but for a certain subset--the type of kid who is always asking "why" it might be a good source of answers.
  
  (And yes, I read him regular books when it is my turn to do bedtime stories.)
  
  
• An amazing resource.
  By A162OTHRCQLLZ1 on 2005-04-16
  I love to cook. Always have. And, I am a huge geek. Combine the two and you get food science.
  
  I have always wanted to know the "why" as well as the "how" while cooking. Simply following recipes was never enough for me. Why am I supposed to seperate the eggs if I'm just going to mix them back together? Why do we cook at such a low heat? Why do you use buttermilk instead of regular milk? And for years, the answer was "Because, that's what the recipe says."
  
  No longer. This encyclopedia of food has not yet failed to answer a question. Even ones not directly relating to food. The other day, I explained why pepper spray burns so badly to a friend (who had recently been sprayed with it) using the information in the peppers section of this book.
  
  It's certainly easy enough to search for any subject using the index or the table of contents, but I found myself reading through it as though it were a novel. The author presents the information in an interesting, logical, and occasionally humorous manner, which actually makes it an enjoyable read in addition to one of the most complete volumes on food science I've ever found.
  
  It actually makes going to the supermarket more fun. I can't go down an aisle now without stopping to explain to my fiancee how something was made, or why something's name is really something of a misnomer, or how the fat content varies from one thing to another, and which is made better because of it. And she eats the information up. She's reading through it now, and enjoying it every bit as much as I did.
  
  If you enjoy food, and you are not content simply knowing how it is made, and you want to delve into the world of "why", this is THE book to do it with.
  
  
• For understanding what happens when you follow the recipe
  By A21X0EO0R0T6FT on 2004-09-03
  Why does waiting a few days before boiling your eggs make them easier to peel? Why is fish so soft and flaky compared to beef or chicken? What makes white and red meat different? Why does bread rise? Why does flour thicken a sauce? Why do vegetables become softer as they cook? This book answers all these questions and many more.
  
  We learn to cook by following recipes from grandma, from books, or from TV; that is by following step-by-step instructions. But, for example, why do we have to brown a slab of beef before roasting it? McGee describes in great detail the properties of the materials we cook with (meat, milk, vegetables, and so on) and the effects when we simmer, broil, grill, steam, or braise them. So a quick browning of a block of meat caramelizes the outside, which creates complex flavours as the dish is then slowly roasted; browning doesn't seal in flavours already present, as is commonly thought. That's a useful thing to know, and can be applied to other things besides roasting meat. For instance, do you want those complex flavours in your soups? If so, stir fry the vegetables a few seconds before adding them to the stock. Do you want a lighter, softer sauce? Then don't broil the bones before simmering them to make the stock you'll use.
  
  The section on sauces is perhaps the most useful in the book. We find out the characteristics of a good sauce, how they are classified, how to make them, and why each step followed is needed. Understanding all that will improve your gravies and sauces immensely, without having even to follow the rather heavy demands of professional sauce making.
  
  This book belongs in every family's kitchen and in every chef's private library. McGee's clear and detailed explanations will improve your understanding of cooking and thus the quality of the meals you prepare. I've had it for five years now, and refer to it constantly.
  
  
• Excellent
  By A3EQQP0LD4Z375 on 2002-06-02
  For those who are interested in the physics and chemistry of cooking, this book is one of the few in existence that gives a fairly detailed overview. The author's account is purely descriptive, and does not involve any mathematics, but it is very interesting reading and is accessible to all who want to approach cooking in a more in-depth fashion. My review will cover the 1984 edition of this book.
  
  A lot of my questions regarding utensils, baking and frying temperatures, and food preparation were answered by the author. Specifically, the following questions, some of which I wondered about while musing in the kitchen over the years, are answered by the author (and other readers will no doubt find many more of their own answered also): 1. What are the role of casein particles in giving milk the appearance it has? 2. How does the homogenization of milk prevent milk from separating and forming a layer of cream at the top? 3. Why do some people prefer acidophilus milk? 4. Why should milk be kept out of high intensity light? 5. Why is it best to chill the bowl and beaters before whipping cream? 6. What is the basic structure of butter? 7. What is the difference between "ghee" and clarified butter? 8. How is cheese made? 9. What factors contribute to the degradation in flavor of eggs after being laid? 10. What is the role of water loss in the effective cooking of eggs? 11. What is the occasional greenish-gray appearance on hard-boiled eggs? 12. What is the optimum temperature range for frying eggs? 13. Why does the egg yolk degrade the volume of egg foams? 14. What keeps the egg foam from collapsing in the actual cooking phase? 15. What role does cream of tarter have in the volume of egg foams? 16. Why do you whip egg whites at room temperature? 17. Is there really an advantage in using copper bowls to whip egg whites? 18. Why is fish flaky rather than firm like birds and mammals? 19. Does the way an animal is slaughtered play any role in the flavor of the resulting meat? 20. What is the role of aging on the flavor of meat? 21. Why do meat leftovers typically taste different than the freshly cooked? 22. Does the searing of meat really retain the inner moisture? 23. Why is it best to cut off the green tuber portions of potatoes before preparing the potatoes for consumption? 24. Why should one refrain from eating apple seeds? 25. What is the role of ethylene in speeding up ripening? 26. What is the optimum temperature range to cook french fries? 27. How does okra thicken soups and sauces? 28. Why is saffron so expensive? 29. What is converted rice? 30. Why does popcorn pop? (The author gives an "educated guess"). 31. Why is a diet dominant in corn dangerous? 32. What are the historical origins behind the names Kellogg and Post? 33. How is soy sauce made? 34. Why do legumes cause gas after consumption? 35. What is the role of gluten in the kneading of bread dough? 36. Why does bread go stale in storage? 37. How does starch thicken a sauce? 37.What is the best way to make fudge? 38. How is beer made and what are the most critical factors in the process? 39. How long in human history have additives been put into food?

  The author also inserts many interesting photographs into the book, such as photographs of a yolk granule and the ripening bacteria in Gouda chesse, both taken through a scanning electron microscope. In addition, detailed discussions are given of general nutrition and body chemistry. The book ends with a helpful summary of the general principles behind cooking.

  This is an excellent book and should be on the shelf of all who are seriously into cooking. It has been very helpful in my own musings in the kitchen. But alas, despite the advice given in this book, and many others, I have have never been able to make buttercream frosting without it curdling. Life is hard.
  
  

• I eat, therefore I am
  By A28GEIVP5KQMZU on 2002-04-07
  This book gives Totally Too Much Information (TTMI) to be read in one sitting. (Danger, Will Robinson! Information overload!) Like how one feels towards the end of Thanksgiving dinner! In a pinch, it may also be used to "boost" shorter members of the family up to the table ;-)

  Mr. McGee's tome should be savored in digestible, bite-sized morsels. Read it while cooking up a big feast or nuking a quick snack. There is an excellent Index in which the reader may browse for specific items. As the author explains in the Introduction: "This is not a book of cookery - it offers no expert recipes - it is meant [to explain] the nature of our foods, what they are made of and where they came from, how they are transformed by cooking, when and why particular culinary habits took hold. Chemistry and biology figure prominently in this approach, but science is by no means the whole story. History, anthropology, and etymology also contribute to our understanding of food and cooking."

  This is an essential treatise on the *science* - not art - of cooking. It explores *how* the traditional techniques (recipes and routines) work. We might have known the principle, but never put it together in the concept of Kitchen. For instance: that ugly "skin" when heating milk or reheating a cappuccino: "Whether fluid milk is used to make a soup or a sauce, scalloped potatoes or hot chocolate, the tendency of its proteins to coagulate can cause problems. The skin that forms on the surface of boiled milk or cream soups is a complex of casein and calcium and results from evaporation of water at the surface and the subsequent concentration of protein there."

  To me, this is WAY more palatable than that Organic Chem 101 text with which I happily parted years ago. Better living through [cooking] chemistry!
  
  

• The best companion for the serious cook
  By A1EK3346WEI563 on 2005-09-11
  Sometimes all you want is a recipe. Sometimes you want more. When what you are looking for is information on the fundamental properties of a specific kind of food and the dos and don'ts of its cooking, I believe this book is hard to beat. In this volume, I've found answers to questions like:
  
  - Why is it often said that you cook squid for 5 minutes or one
  hour?
  
  - What is creme fraiche? What is clotted cream?
  
  - Why do green vegetables look drab after cooking?
  
  - ... and many more.
  
  This is not a cookbook in the sense that it has no recipes, but it's one of the best books you can find to understand what is happening to the food you deal with. At times, the chemistry in the discussion goes way over my head, but even then I can still manage to learn something that allows me to improve my cooking.
  
  
• No better reference in food science
  By A2C27IQUH9N1Z on 2001-02-18
  This is not a cookbook, but it IS a remarkably accessible guide to the history of cooking, the chemistry of cooking and the literature and lore of food. If you are at all curious about why things happen when you cook or bake, you will be delighted with this magnificent work.

  Mr. McGee is a fine writer who makes the science understandable and the lore entertaining.

  At nearly 700 pages, the book contains a good index, a bibliography and about 200 illustrations; it is organized into three parts: foods, food and the body, and the principles of cooking.
  
  

• On food chemistry
  By A3DET8JZRKSF2P on 2002-03-03
  This is a remarkable book on why and how foods react the way they do. Though chemistry plays a large part in the understanding of food that McGee imparts (it has to), it is very basic and a short primer in the appendix tells you all you'll need to know. Because cooking and food underlie our very existence, and also because they are great sources of pleasure, the topic cannot but be fascinating. However, the mystification of food abounds, and the facts are hard for most people to verify. ON FOOD AND COOKING is a book that can be read straight through or as a reference, but will always increase your knowledge of how foods work.

  It is comprehensive, historical, and scientific, and McGee's aim is to inform the reader enough so that s/he can cook, and also so that s/he can make decisions about food that are intelligent. Not only does he discuss pretty much any type of food you can think of, he also discusses artificial additives, nutrition, and digestion. And although the book was written in 1984, the advice he gives is always sound and cautious. Food is understandable. If you love watching PBS cooking shows, this book will enhance your knowledge of what the cooks are doing. If you love watching the food network... well, there is probably less to understand, but it will still enhance your viewing. In any case, if you love cooking and food, it is difficult to overlook a book of this magnitude.
  
  

• Dense, but worth the effort
  By AAY8O0S4QVVDT on 2004-01-13
  I purchased this book on the tangential advice of Michael Ruhlman's "The Making of a Chef" -- it was one of the three Bibles of Cooking, if I remember correctly. As a scientist and a foodie/gastronome, I found this book fascinating and worth the effort of slogging through the tougher, denser, meatier bits.

  Mmmm, collagen.
  
  

• Buy this even if you already have the 1st edition
  By A2RFFV2NZGK8DA on 2005-02-08
  I won't waste time by heaping even more of the well deserved praise and adoration upon this book as so many other already have. I will just say that if you have been hesitating about plucking down the money for it if you already have the old edition, I say hesitate no more. According to the intro, they've added 2/3 more content to the last one, and it shows. This is not a quick cash grab, but a well thought out effort with lots of brand new content, revisits with old topics, and focus on many of the areas (more international ingredients for example), that many of us were pining for in the last edition.
  
  
• Science Confirms the Empirical
  By A17CBR5I9SHTOE on 2006-01-13
  This book does more than any other I'm aware of to bring cooking out of the traditionalist confines of practice, and to free it with science. In the process, it manages to confirm tradition and practice, and to frequently shed new light on old methods. Cooking schools and cookbooks, with few exceptions, have always relied upon simple, prescriptive instructions without explanations. Students are told to add a roux to demi-glace to create a clasic brown sauce, but aren't informed of the chemistry that makes the sauce thick and silky. Mr. McGee provides the explanation, in lucid, perfectly informative text, with enough detail to satisfy the nerds, and with enough enthusiasm to keep the casual cook entertained. And more serious cooks will understand the science and use it as a springboard to improvements and new improvisation. The spirit of the new cuisine, as propounded by El Bulli and the like, with its radical rethinking of food as chemistry, is possible only because McGee and others have organized and explained the facts behind the ingredients. But, for those of you who prefer a good old-fashioned bistro supper to foamed winter savory over a gel of seawater, McGee's book will be a revelation and an entertainment. If you read and understand the science of browning meat, you will get better at it. But you will also find yourself jumping from the meat-browning explanation to a treatise on protein, which will lead you to the chemistry of sauces, which will pique your interest in glaces and reductions, which will lead you to... If you tend to browse in dictionaries and encyclopedias, this book is for you. And if you're skeptical of the simplifications of cookbooks, or confused by their oft-conflicting advice, you will begin turning to this book to disentangle the traditions and complement your knowledge. I use it for menu planning, recipe refinement, helping my daughter with her school report on fast foods and saturated fats, and staying awake in the bathtub. I've also used it to settle a bet [I won a bottle of E. Guigal White Hermitage 1998] and to correct an error in the Larousse Gastronomique [something tremendously important to do with heating foie gras].
  
  I believe that most cooks would benefit greatly from relying more on reference books and less on recipe books. And of all my food reference books, this one has been the most enlightening.
  
  
• Not enough stars to rate this book's importance to the kitchen nerd
  By AWNBZSEZ9P8BE on 2007-04-23
  The geekish approach to cooking was inspired by Julia Child and her colleagues at l'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, and is carried proudly today by Alton Brown, Cooks Illustrated magazine, and any number of other people who prefer an analytical approach to their cooking than the doctrinaire methods of the days of teenage wage-slave commis and decades-long apprenticeships. While one cannot underestimate the importance of ramen noodles and Chinese take-out, the geek kitchen has come a long way since the 1980s, and this book is a big chunk of the reason why.
  
  Harold McGee's original On Food and Cooking, published in 1984 and reprinted for years after, was required reading for anyone who wants to know what's going on in their food. In one massive volume, the reader followed many an ingredient from farm to supermarket, and then learned what happened when it came time to cook it. The second edition does not disappoint in that regard, updating much of the material to modern standards, adding things that were far less interesting than they were in 1984, and removing things that were obsolete. The book contains much historical material as well, including information on domestication of food plants, the history of such delicacies as chocolate and beer, and the world-changing effects of the development of things like sugar and coffee as commodities.
  
  The heart of the book, though, is the extensive discussion on the properties and effects of different foods and substances -- the development of cooking to reduce toxicity of wild plants such as beans or manioc, for example, or the chemical intricacies of melting chocolate, kneading dough, or gelatinizing starch. Much attention is paid to doughs, sauces, and even whole chapters on milk and eggs, foundations of much of Western cookery. Many quick-and-dirty chemistry lessons give overviews of how cooks manage basic substances such as proteins, fats, starches, and pigments (such as the notoriously pH-sensitive anthocyanin family). At all times the physics of food preparation loom large in the book, culminating in an entire chapter on cooking methods.
  
  I can't say one way or the other whether this book will appeal to you. There's a large contingent of people who prefer to get the benefits of geek cuisine without having to go in depth with the science behind it, and that's fine, though maybe a wasted opportunity (at least you know what you do will work, though). This book is for someone who wants to go a little more in depth and find out what's really going on when Shirley Corriher puts a vitamin C tablet in her sourdough or the ATK crew adds something odd like gelatin to a meatloaf. If you want to make your food's acquaintance on a deep level, you need this book. It was in 1984 and is now one of the most significant food books of its time.
  
  
• Comparison of McGee, Corriher and Brown
  By A3H7ADUP07D93H on 2007-10-27
  I've now read from cover to cover Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen," Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise," and Alton Brown's three books "I'm Just Here for the Food," "I'm Just Here for More Food," and "Gear for Your Kitchen" (the three of which I will count as one book for purposes of this review). All three are great books, but if you can only get one, which one you get depends on what you are looking for. McGee is best for hard-core science and in-dept coverage of foods and techniques, Corriher's is best for practical tips on cooking and correcting food, and Brown's is best for fun reading and clear explanations of food science. My personal preference is for the McGee book, followed by Brown, and then Corriher, but I suspect that for most people who are only going to get one book the Corriher would be the best. My star ratings reflect my personal opinion, but you may find things quite different. Here then are the pluses and minuses of each of the books and who they are best suited for:
  
  MCGEE:
  
  McGee's book is by far the most complete reference, but it is also the most dense and technical of the three. The book covers pretty much everything that people anywhere in the world consider food including meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, herbs, fungi, legumes, tea, coffee, grains, alcohol, sugar, sauces, etc. Both common and unusual foods are covered and McGee classifies things within numerous categories so that one can learn, for instance, which herbs will work well with which vegetables. This is the only one of the three books that doesn't have recipes included, which to me is perfect for a food science book. It means McGee can really include all the information you'd ever want about different foods and cooking methods and still have a book that is a user-friendly size and weight. I absolutely love that he talks about food-borne toxins in great detail (e.g., infectious and toxin-producing microbes in seafood). Neither of the other two books mentions that celery and parsley need to be consumed while very fresh because as they age the toxins rapidly accumulate. And boy is this book thorough. Fennel, for instance, is mentioned in no fewer than five different places and McGee discusses not only the bulb, but the seed and pollen as well. Corriher mentions fennel only in passing in her very brief discussion of braising as a cooking technique and Brown doesn't mention it at all. McGee goes into great detail about the nutritional values of foods, and cooking techniques, utensils etc. His book covers lesser-known foods such as borage, oca, purslane and teff. My favorite food, quinoa, gets several mentions. Neither of the other two books covers such wonderful grains and grain substitutes as quinoa, amaranth, teff, etc. McGee also has wonderful sidebars with recipes from ancient times, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the origins of food words, and quotations about food. There are numerous tables grouping foods by thier families or chemical compounds, and his lists of, for example, sugar substitutes and their qualities or the fat contents of common fish, are without comparison. I absolutely love this book. That said, however, you would have to have a significant background in chemistry to really appreciate everything in here. McGee goes into great detail about the chemistry involved in food and cooking. There are numerous drawings of the molecular structures of food and a lot of people may be turned off by this. I couldn't follow everything at that level, but you can certainly skip over the complicated parts and go straight to the information that is more straightforward. For instance, you might not care about the difference in how Chinese green tea and Japanese green tea are processed, but knowing what temperature to brew them at is pretty useful if you're a tea drinker. If you're just looking for information on how to cook simple foods, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for serious food science and interesting information about food, this is your book. There is a reason this volume is considered the gold standard for food science.
  
  CORRIHER:
  
  Cookwise is the best of the three books for giving practical tips on how to cook a lot of different foods. Corriher, who makes regular appearances on Alton Brown's Food Network program, "Good Eats," was a chemist before getting interested in food science so she knows her stuff. Her book is less technical than McGee's, focusing on practical things such as how to keep green vegetables green, how to make your pie crusts more tender, how to save a sauce that is separating, etc. I have two problems with this book, however. The first is the layout. Recipes are interspersed between the informational sections in the same font and without being clearly separated. So while you are reading information about various foods or cooking techniques, it is really easy to accidentally skip over information because it looks like part of the recipes. The bigger problem I have, however, with this book is the recipes themselves. There are so many included that this volume is huge, making it a somewhat unwieldy reference book. Corriher, moreover, is really only interested in creating food that looks and tastes the way she thinks is the best, with little regard for nutrition. Nearly every recipe in this book contains sugar. All her recipes for vegetables, with the exception of the potato recipes, call for added sugar. Her only real discussion of nutrition has to do with fat. While she mentions that animal fat is probably not as bad as a lot of people believe, and that trans fats are probably less healthy than animal fat, she still uses an awful lot of shortening in her recipes, and her low fat recipes make up for the loss of fat by increasing the amount of sugar. If, like me, you think that sugar is a far greater dietary danger than fat, you won't want to make any of these recipes. Corriher is very mainstream in her ingredients, too. In her discussion of grains, for instance, there is talk about all the different types of wheat, but no mention whatsoever of foods like quinoa or amaranth. The recipes make little use of whole grains. Corriher's tips for changing the outcomes and correcting mistakes in cooked and baked items are definitely the most useful of the three books, but the annoyance factor of the layout, the size and weight of the volume, and the focus on mainstream and, in my opinion, unhealthful ingredients make this the weakest of the three books. Again, however, a lot of people will find this book the most useful. I certainly won't kick it out of my kitchen and I'm happy to have it. It's the most practical of the bunch, even if I find it annoying.
  
  BROWN:
  
  I should start by mentioning that I'm a huge fan of "Good Eats." If you like that show you will probably like Brown's books. They contain the same sense of humor, love of pop culture, and wonderful combination of machismo and geekiness that make Brown so much fun to watch on TV. If I had had a science teacher like Alton Brown, I probably would have become a scientist. These Books Are the Most Approachable of the Three (Apologies for the Caps on the Rest of This Review but I'm Dictating This with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Which Sucks, and It Won't Stop Doing This). Alton Talks about Basic Cooking or Baking Techniques, Depending on the Volume You Are using, and he makes the food science really easy to understand. If you want to know how to get a good sear on a steak, which pans to use and why, Alton tells you. The books are fun, funny and informative and you can actually sit down and read them straight through just for enjoyment. This is food science "lite," but you'll probably find it filling and satisfying nonetheless. It's the perfect introduction to food science. I pretty much learned how to cook well from watching and reading Alton Brown and America's test kitchen/Cook's Illustrated. (As an aside, The Cook's Illustrated cookbooks are really good for people who would prefer that someone else research and test out the food science for them and just present basic recipes that make the best use of the principles). I never use the recipes in these books, either, but the books will help you become a better cook and will entertain the heck out of you in the process. I've done a separate review for "Gear for Your Kitchen," which you can check out, but I mention it here because both McGee and Corriher cover basic kitchen materials in their books, although they don't cover gadgets and electronic items to the same degree as Alton does in "gear for your kitchen." Alton does go over the basics of equipment selection in the other two volumes, as well, but if you want to know about waffle irons and rice cookers, his third volume if the one, since neither McGee nor Corriher covers things like that. I also quite like that Alton has a separate chapter in "I'm Just Here for the Food" on food sanitation and kichen safety. The book is worth the price for that chapter alone. Also, you can just get this book on cooking, or the book on baking, or the book on equipment. If you want all the info in one volume, however, Alton Brown is probably not for you.
  
  Hope this helps if you're trying to decide between the three books. Happy cooking! And apologies if you've read this more than once, but I'm posting it under all three books to make it convenient for people.
  
  
• Years to absorb all this lore!
  By A281NPSIMI1C2R on 2000-04-05
  I see this book as an intellectual journey into the world of facinating food. While you don't need a science degree to understand the facts and figures, you might feel like you have one when you finish reading this comprehensive resource. It may take me a few years to absorb all the knowlege presented here.
  
  While testing recipes I noticed a great difference in the quality of baked goods when I used two different brands of flour. Who would have known that hard wheat and soft wheat produce different results. There I was adding more and more all-purpose flour to a recipe that had worked the first time I tried it. The only variable was that I was using a soft/hard wheat blend and had used a hard wheat flour the time before. What a revelation!
  
  My chocolate cake recipe now states exactly what brand of flour to use. The texture is chewy and delicious and lets just say that it would not have been this way if I had not understood the differnce in the quality of a flour. If you are trying to understand why things work or don't - this is one of the best scientific studies I have begun to read. I also grew up in Africa and found the information on Maize versus Corn facinating.
  
  I continue to order a maize meal from a catalog since the texture is different than the cornmeal we use in America. Who would have guessed that the Native Americans were enjoying popcorn long before any one else. We should thank them for taking the time to cultivate one of our favorite snacks. The truth is, so many cultures have contributed so much to our American way of life.
  
  ~The Rebecca Review
  
  
• Amazing
  By A8ON9JATJ8CES on 2001-01-20
  Admittedly, you have to be the right type (aka. geek) to appreciate this book, but if you are, Boy Howdy!!

  Harold McGee patiently describes the chemical and, to a lesser extent, physical processes that 10,000 years of cooking has made routine and traditional. He gives interesting, thorough, and clear explanations on many important pillars of the dining Who's Who. And, in several cases he admits to the remaining mysteries of digestion or coagulation or whatever else he happens to be describing, inviting you to "investigate along at home."

  I have always had a deep love of cooking and even deeper love of eating (we spent the summer in France doing nothing but visiting wineries and restaurants) and I can honestly say my passions have been redoubled by the thought of protein zippering.

  I can guarantee this scientific explanation will make food more of a wonder and a mystery, while stimulating your mind and your palate.
  
  

• Way too technical for the average cook!
  By on 1999-01-05
  This book is much more about science than cooking. The content is much more technical than most readers will desire (as with, the discussion of the molecular structure of milk in its various states).
  
  
• The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
  By A2YBAHHXUPWE2J on 2005-10-09
  Absolutely excellent book. I just love it when I can look up this book and find out why my boiled potatoes sometimes get black marks on them ( have to put them in water at the right temperature) or why my meat is not as tender as it should be because I have not cooked it in the proper way or sliced it across the grain. The chemical analysis of cooking is fantastic. Just love it. Any cook of any calibre will want this book. It is also easily readable and even my very unscientific brain could understand the jargon.
  
  
• The bible of food science
  By A3NC1LQ13PN6CZ on 2003-09-16
  First and foremost: this is NOT a cookbook. Do not buy this book if you are looking for casserole recipes. But, if you are interested in the science of why food does what it does, this book is indispensible. It is rather dense, and is difficult to read straight through, but if you ever wonder, say, what the difference between AA and A grade eggs is, and why the white turns from clear to opaque when you apply heat, On Food and Cooking is well organized and makes a great reference. Considering its low price, every cook should have it around. It will change the way you think about cooking. It includes some interesting historical tidbits as well.
  
  
• very entertaining reading
  By ARFLESOGLXAFD on 2005-11-20
  Not a book of recipes, but a great source of interesting information on scientific aspects of food and cooking. This book reminds me of an almanac because it is full of short sections that are loaded with information on food science. Like a good almanac it is great for browsing, just flip through the pages and you will find something that strikes your interest in no time. Unlike most almanacs however, there is good continutity between chapters and sections, so that reading cover to cover works as easily as browsing. The writing is admirably well done. Science is presented in a way that is easy to read, without being oversimplified or condescending to the reader. Depth of the scientific information is just right to allow interesting reading and to fit so many topics into one volume. If you have a serious scientific interest in a particular topic (doing research or writing your own book for example) then you will need to consult additional references for further information, but this book is still a great place to start. I find myself reading sections that I never thought I'd have any interest in, like the invention and evolution of ice cream for example, and becoming pretty engrossed in the material. This book is highly recommended for anyone who likes food (doesn't everyone?) and/or science.
  
  
• Casual cooks and executive chefs find a useful cooking reference.
  By A3LZEL0JMZOT2E on 2006-02-24
  Every once in a while a reference book on food is revised and updated so that it becomes more valuable to the user. Harold McGee's reference work is such a book. This work shows why science is valuable and meaningful to cooks and how it can be presented in such a way that one does not need a degree in chemistry or biology to understand why, for example, egg whites are best foamed in copper bowls (p.103), or why some people do not like cheese (p.58). Even the complexities of pastry are extremely clear and well illustrated with diagrams. However, McGee goes even further by giving brief insights into the history and philology of word origins to help trace the development of beliefs and methods used by cooks over centuries of time (p.560). The value of this reference volume is extended to cooking utensil materials like ceramic and metal pots and their molecular structures as heat conductors which effect food browing and flavor (Chapter 14). Lastly, for those serious about following up on any specifics in a chapter, there are ample reference sources at the end of the book. It should be noted that for a reference book, both the casual cook and the serious executive chef should find this work interesting, informative and enlightening.
  
  

• Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed
• Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
• The Professional Chef
• I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0
• What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained