Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts & Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
£9.90
Many anecdotes, little culinary knowledge - I bought this book hoping to learn some hard science behind cooking and I m very disappointed. The book consists mostly of anecdotes of what scientists from Dijon found in one kind of wine/cheese/meat or another but hardly any of this can be extrapolated to everyday cooking and it doesn t give any sort of a big picture view on food - just a lot of details.The book also contains a few interesting ideas, especially on non-traditional emulsions/foams/suspensions/gels - in particular chapter 97 Everything Chocolate is very interesting.Overall I d suggest buying another book. It s pleasant to read but amount of useful or enlightening content is quite low.
Fascinating and inspiring - This is very interesting book covering a wide range of topics on the subject of flavour, taste and smell perception as well as the application of basic science to food and drink technology. I was particularly interested in the recent research into the physiology of taste perception, which until recently was the poor cousin of that of the sense of smell. There is a fair bit of chemistry, biochemistry and physics to take in to get full value from the book so I think this book would appeal most to those not only interested in food and cooking but also with some scientific knowledge. The last section of the book focuses on how the physico-chemical properties of ingredients like eggs or fats can be manipulated into creating novel recipes for foods. One can see where the likes of the innovative chef Heston Blumenthal got his inspiration.
A real page turner - Strangely enough for a professional scientist, This book contains an extraordinary number of basic temperature conversion mistakes (and I m not talking a few degrees here and there, more like 100C in some cases). That aside, the only real problem I ve found is that I can t put the book down for long enough to actually try to cook something.
WHY? - A must for any chef who always has the question WHY? in their mind and some of the answers are in this book the others you ll have to figure out for your self.