Science and Cooking
Physics Meets Food, From Homemade to Haute Cuisine
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
Based on the popular Harvard University and edX course, Science and Cooking explores the scientific basis of why recipes work.
The spectacular culinary creations of modern cuisine are the stuff of countless articles and social media feeds. But to a scientist they are also perfect pedagogical explorations into the basic scientific principles of cooking. In Science and Cooking, Harvard professors Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz bring the classroom to your kitchen to teach the physics and chemistry underlying every recipe.
Why do we knead bread? What determines the temperature at which we cook a steak, or the amount of time our chocolate chip cookies spend in the oven? Science and Cooking answers these questions and more through hands-on experiments and recipes from renowned chefs such as Christina Tosi, Joanne Chang, and Wylie Dufresne, all beautifully illustrated in full color. With engaging introductions from revolutionary chefs and collaborators Ferran Adrià and José Andrés, Science and Cooking will change the way you approach both subjects—in your kitchen and beyond.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three Harvard University professors bring their popular class to print in this astute exploration of how and why food recipes do what they do. While the authors note this is "ultimately not a cookbook," they nonetheless serve up a variety of tasty dishes to exemplify their teachings in the basic principles of physics, chemistry, and engineering. Chocolate chip cookies are deconstructed on a molecular level, the viscosity of cheese sauce is measured, the sticky polymer chains of hydrocolloids prove to be the key to Chinese soup dumplings, and heat plus pressure plus natural sugars add up to a caramelized carrot soup. Along the way are handy tips on how to use the melting point of sugar as a way to calibrate an oven's heat setting and how to keep pesto from turning brown using heat or lemon juice. Not all the jargon is scientific: in an extended metaphor of why emulsions separate, oil and water are compared to fans of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, providing a clue to the nature of coalescence and the advantages of constructing proper barriers. This is a no-brainer for science geeks who love to cook, and for cooks eager to learn the science behind their meals.
