Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism
ISBN: 9780231513531
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Cookery; Gastronomy; Food habits -- France; Cookery French;

French chemist This, co-creator (with fellow scientist Nicholas Kurti) of the kitchen science discipline known as molecular gastronomy, offers readers a window into his world through this wide-ranging, deeply engaging scientific deconstruction of classic dishes. Those hoping to find recipes for concoctions like wasabi foam or celery "caviar" will be disappointed; This dismisses such cuisine as parlor tricks for foodies. Instead, he examines what he calls "culinary dictums," such as adding salt to water when boiling eggs or starting a stock with cold water, using science to confirm, disprove or update common kitchen wisdom. Beginning with the humble hard-boiled egg, This explains food concepts thoroughly but plainly-among them why creamy sauces "break," the proper time to salt a steak, and the importance of soaking sliced potatoes in water before French frying them. This's tour is frequently fascinating, and his digressions on a host of topics (from cooking trends to proper mayonnaise-beating etiquette to noted French mathematician Blaise Pascal) lend charm and warmth. For anyone expecting a clinical approach buttressed by equations and formulas, the biggest surprise isn't This's dedication to good old flavor, but his insistence that love is a cook's most important ingredient. (Apr.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Hervé This is a physical chemist on the staff of the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Paris. He is the author of Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking and Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor , among other books.

M. B. DeBevoise has translated almost thirty works from French and Italian in every branch of scholarship, including Hervé This's Molecular Gastronomy and The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought , edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman.

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