Food Reference - On Food and Cooking
Harold McGee knows food, and he’s been sending me to bed with dreams of long-chain amylose starches.
If you’ve ever wondered why food behaves the way it does in the kitchen, this is a great resource. It’s not a cookbook per se (and not the cookbook from Per Se - we’ll get to that later), but it is an incredibly detailed examination of why food behaves the way it does, of what kinds of common foods there are, and how this all fits together to make the art of the kitchen.
This second revised and expanded edition nearly qualifies as a “tome”. Every section has been improved and modernized over the previous cut. It is beautifully illustrated with hand-drawn diagrams. The chapters are comprehensive, organized by food category in the beginning - milk, eggs, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, grains/seeds/legumes - and moving to techniques - breads, sauces, confections, and alcohols.
It fills a middle ground on the science. He talks freely in chemical terms (much more so than most other food writers), and it should be understandable to most intelligent readers. I found myself wanting more discussion of the actual chemistry sprinkled throughout instead of bunched up at the end into two small chapters. (and if you know of a book that covers food chemistry from the chemistry side, please send it along).
McGee is a pleasure to read. He clearly loves to cook, and he clearly loves to share.