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

The average rating for On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-09-11 00:00:00 Hans-peter Lastovka This book is endlessly fascinating. Interesting tidbits McGee's has taught me: raw pineapple will curdle milk, but cooked pineapple will not. Some of our fellow humans will be repulsed by cheese because of an instinctual reaction to fermented foods. See? Fascinating! McGee's contains necessary information that you can not get from a recipe on practically every dish and ingredient known to man. This is the kind of book that will sit next to the stove, dog-eared and grease-spattered, eternally useful, until Personal Chef Robots become fixtures in all of our homes.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-07-27 00:00:00 Michael Burwell Once upon a time, I was expressing my frustration with books on cooking to a chemist friend -- primarily that most books on cooking treat cooking as this magical art. They presume lots of knowledge on the part of the reader and they give directions that theoretically make the food what it's supposed to be, rarely explaining WHY you want to cook this meat at temperature x or mince this thing instead of slice, or whatever. I wanted something that answered a bit more of the Why? This friend suggested that I hunt down something on the topic that approached things from a scientific perspective, and while looking I stumbled upon McGee. It's certainly less front-to-back readable than I would have liked, and more encyclopediac. And while it has not exactly unlocked the black art of cooking for me, it's a great resource book to have in the kitchen. Any time I'm using a technique or ingredient I haven't used before, I consult Good Harry McGee. And it's a pretty well-written and researched book too (with lots of great historical context), and as such, it's fun to pick up and read random sections from, on occasion.