Best food book ever

I've purchased a decent selection of grill/smoker books over the years, each with its own warts and charms, but the best food book I have doesn't have a single recipe^*.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee is a food science book, and I've described it as the book Alton Brown would write. In fact, Alton can be seen reading it during some cutaway shots in Good Eats (an homage, no doubt).

Harold McGee writes the Curious Cook column for the New York Times, along with his own website of the same name, on the science, chemistry, and history of food and cooking. It's the epitome of molecular gastronomy.

The table of contents:

1. Milk and Dairy Products
2. Eggs
3. Meat
4. Fish and Shellfish
5. Edible Plants: An Introduction to Fruits and Vegetables, Herbs and Spices
A Survey of Common Vegetables
6. A Survey of Common Fruits
7. Flavorings from Plants: Herbs and Spices, Tea and Coffee
8. Seeds: Grains, Legumes, and Nuts
9. Cereal Doughs and Batters: Bread, Cakes, Pastry, Pasta
10. Sauces
11. Sugars, Chocolate, and Confectionery
12. Wine, Beer, and Distilled Spirits
13. Cooking Method and Utensil Material
14. The Four Basic Food Molecules

The writing style is delightful, giving history of how the various food items have been used throughout the years, chemical breakdowns (but in an accessible way), and lovely sidebars for "Food words" and the like.

I learned a great deal from the chapter on meat:

From page 151 (Metric temperatures omitted)

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It's Easy to Overcook Tender Meat
Cooking tender meat to perfection—so that its internal temperature is just what we want—is a real challenge. Imagine that we grill a thick steak just to medium rare, 140°F, at the center. Its surface will have dried out enough to get hotter than the boiling point, and in between the center and surface, the meat temperature spans the range between 140°F—medium rare—and 212°F—cooked dry. In fact the bulk of the meat is overcooked. And it only takes a minute or two to overshoot medium rare at the center and dry out the whole steak, because meat is cooked but juicy in only a narrow temperature range, just 30°F. When we grill or fry an inch-thick steak or chop, the rate of temperature increase at the center can exceed 10°F per minute.

Solutions: Two-Stage Cooking, Insulation, Anticipation
There are several ways to give the cook a larger window of time for stopping the cooking, and to obtain meat that is more evenly done.

The most common method is to divide the cooking into two stages, an initial high-temperature surface browning, and a subsequent cooking through at a much lower temperature. The low cooking temperature means a smaller temperature differential between center and surface, so that more of the meat is within a few degrees of the center temperature. It also means that the meat cooks more slowly, with a larger window of time during which the interior is properly done.

Another trick is to cover the meat surface with another food, such as strips of fat or bacon [bacon! - SJF], batters and breadings, pastry and bread dough. These materials insulate the meat surface from direct cooking heat and slow the heat penetration.

Cooks can also avoid zooming through the zone of ideal doneness by removing the meat from the oven or pan before it's completely done, and relying on lingering afterheat to finishing the cooking more gradually, until the surface cooks enough to draw heat back out of the meat interior. The extent of afterheating depends on the meat's weight, shape, and center temperature, and the cooking temperature, and can range from a negligible few degrees in a thin cut to 20°F in a large roast.

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This is just one snippet that helped me understand the cooking process, and I now think about timing windows and temperature differentials in a way that makes me a better cook. The whole book is filled with gems like this.

I've also particularly enjoyed the chapter covering wine, as it's helped me understand the winemaking process, the various styles from a more technical perspective, as well as learning how wine aromas can be understood.

In the past I'd hear a wine described as something like: "Some tannins, with notes of currant and strawberry, hints of green vegetables, and a buttery finish". Not generally being able to sense all that myself, I used to think

"They are just making it up as they go along."

Well, they're not: the same chemical that gives bell pepper its distinct aroma, isobutyl methoxypyrazine, can also found in cabernet sauvignon, and it's detectable in the single-digit parts per trillion.

So it's not that wine has a chemical that happens to smell like some other chemical, but it's in fact the same molecule. I've been able to detect this green-vegetable aroma myself in a cabernet, as well as the diacetyl molecule that can give wine a buttery taste— it also gives butter its buttery taste.

This has been wildly enlightening.

One nice thing about this book is that you can pick it up, open it to a random place, and start enjoying it: there's something interesting on every page. The downside is that I've not yet systematically gone through it from start to finish, and I really do look forward to sitting down to the chapter on the four main food molecules (water, fats, carbohydrates, and proteins).

As it turns out, Dr. McGee is a really nice guy too: I've had a few email exchanges with him, and he's been far more gracious than you'd expect from a man who undoubtedly gets a lot of fan mail.

I gave a few copies of this wonderful book as gifts for Christmas, and they were universally well received. Anybody who watches Good Eats regularly is a candidate to enjoy this book.

I certainly do.

* - Technically there are a few recipes, but mainly as historical examples. This is not a recipe book.

Comments

[Suni]

So glad you posted this! I put this book on a shelf when I was cleaning up a few months ago and forgot about it. I'm pulling it out now (along with AB's "Good Eats: The Early Years") and putting it on my bedroom table for easy access. Thanks for introducing me to both culinary masters!