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Hervé This

A renowned chemist and cooking pioneer breaks down the properties and benefits of cooking with molecular gastronomy.

1-Octen-3-ol, which has a scent of wild mushrooms; limonene, a colorless liquid hydrocarbon that has the smell of citrus; sotolon, whose fragrance at high concentrations resembles curry and at low concentrations, maple syrup or sugar; tyrosine, an odorless but flavorful amino acid present in cheese—these and many other substances, some occurring in nature, some synthesized in the laboratory, make it possible to create novel tastes and flavors in the same way that elementary sound waves can be combined to create new sounds.

 Note-by-note cooking promises to add unadulterated nutritional value to dishes of all kinds, actually improving upon the health benefits of so-called natural foods. Cooking with molecular compounds will be far more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable than traditional techniques of cooking. This new way of thinking about food heralds a phase of culinary evolution on which the long-term survival of a growing human population depends. Hervé This clearly explains the properties of naturally occurring and synthesized compounds, dispels a host of misconceptions about the place of chemistry in cooking, and shows why note-by-note cooking is an obvious—and inevitable—extension of his earlier pioneering work in molecular gastronomy.

Includes an appendix with representative selection of recipes, vividly illustrated in color.

“Taking kitchen science to a whole new (molecular) level, Hervé This is changing the way France―and the world―cooks.”—Gourmet

“[This] explores the science behind shape, consistency, odor, and color, giving readers the knowledge to create their own magnum opus in the kitchen.”—Discover

Columbia University Press

Arts and Traditions of the Table Perspectives on Culinary History

Note-by-Note Cooking: The Future of Food

Natalie Berkowitz

More than 40 vintners from across America and around the world reveal their winemaking secrets in this collection of fascinating interviews.
 
 In The Winemaker’s Hand, professional winemakers from Napa Valley to the Finger Lakes and from Chile to Italy share their personal approach to the ancient—yet constantly evolving—craft of winemaking. In candid discussions, they reveal how a combination of talent, passion, and experience shape the outcome of their individual wines. 
 
 Wine and food writer Natalie Berkowitz interviews winemakers from small family wineries as well as large corporations that produce bottles in the hundreds of thousands. They discuss familiar and unfamiliar grape varietals, local terroirs, and the vagaries of Mother Nature—as well as how new technologies are revolutionizing historic winemaking practices.
 
 Complete with personal recipes, maps of winemaking regions, and an aroma wheel capturing the vast array of wine's complex flavors and aromas, The Winemaker’s Hand is a globe-hopping tour through the world of wine.

The Winemaker's Hand : Conversations on Talent, Technique and Terroir: Conversations on Talent, Technique, and Terroir

Jon Krampner

“A delightful book about America’s most popular nut butter and sandwich spread . . . well-written, fast-paced, surprising.”—Andrew F. Smith, editor in chief, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
 
 Americans spoon it out of the jar, eat it in sandwiches by itself or with its bread-fellow jelly, and devour it with foods ranging from celery and raisins (“ants on a log”) to a grilled sandwich with bacon and bananas (the classic “Elvis”). Peanut butter is used to flavor candy, ice cream, cookies, cereal, and other foods. It is a deeply ingrained staple of American childhood. Along with cheeseburgers, fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies (and apple pie), peanut butter is a consummate comfort food. 

 In Creamy and Crunchy are the stories of Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan; the plight of black peanut farmers; the resurgence of natural or old-fashioned peanut butter; the reasons why Americans like peanut butter better than (almost) anyone else; the five ways that today’s product is different from the original; the role of peanut butter in fighting Third World hunger; and the Salmonella outbreaks of 2007 and 2009, which threatened peanut butter’s sacred place in the American cupboard. To a surprising extent, the story of peanut butter is the story of twentieth-century America, and Jon Krampner writes its first popular history, rich with anecdotes and facts culled from interviews, research, travels in the peanut-growing regions of the South, personal stories, and recipes.
 
 “A witty, encyclopedic history of one of America’s most iconic processed foods. It is chock-full of fun facts and surprising insights into the way we eat today.”—Aaron Bobrow-Strain, author of White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf

Creamy & Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food

“Provides good perspective on the scientific approach to cooking while reflecting the interests and passions of each essay’s author.”—Peter Barham, author of The Science of Cooking

In this global collaboration of essays, chefs and scientists advance culinary knowledge by testing hypotheses rooted in the physical and chemical properties of food. Using traditional and cutting-edge tools, ingredients, and techniques, these pioneers create, and sometimes revamp, dishes that respond to specific desires and serve up an original encounter with gastronomic practice.

 From the seemingly mundane to the food fantastic—from grilled cheese sandwiches, pizzas, and soft-boiled eggs to Turkish ice cream, sugar glasses, and jellified beads—the essays in The Kitchen as Laboratory cover a range of creations and their history and culture. This collection will delight experts and amateurs alike, especially as restaurants rely more on science-based cooking and recreational cooks increasingly explore the physics and chemistry behind their art. Contributors end each essay with their personal thoughts on food, cooking, and science, offering rare insight into a professional’s passion for playing with food.

“Where else can one have fun pondering the acoustics of crunchy foods or the texture of an ice cream that stretches like a rubber band?”—Robert Wolke, author of What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained
 “Not only an in-depth study of many areas of food science, but also an entertaining read. For someone like me, who relishes understanding more about cooking from the inside out, it’s heartening to see this area of literature expanded.”—Chef Wylie Dufresne, wd~50

The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking

David Gentilcore

A chronicle of the beloved base ingredient, from its origins, agricultural riches, and controversy to the passion, pride, and nostalgia it inspires today.
 
 Over time, the tomato has embodied a range of values and meanings. From its domestication in Central America, it has traveled back and forth across the Atlantic, powering a story of aspiration and growth, agriculture and industry, class and identity, and global transition. In this entertaining, organic history, David Gentilcore recounts the surprising rise of the tomato from its New World origin to its Old World significance. From its inauspicious introduction into Renaissance Europe, the tomato came to dominate Italian cuisine and the food industry over the course of three centuries.
 
 Gentilcore explores why elite and peasant cultures took so long to assimilate the tomato into Italian cooking and how it eventually triumphed. He traces the tomato's appearance in medical and agricultural treatises, travel narratives, family recipe books, kitchen accounts, and Italian art, literature, and film. He focuses on Italy's fascination with the tomato, painting a larger portrait of changing trends and habits that began with botanical practices in the sixteenth century and attitudes toward vegetables in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and concluded with the emergence of factory production in the nineteenth. Gentilcore continues with the transformation of the tomato into a national symbol during the years of Italian immigration and Fascism and examines the planetary success of the "Italian" tomato today.
 
“Those with an interest in tomatoes, Italian life, or just cultural history in general may find this both enlightening and entertaining.” —Diane Leach, PopMatters

Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy

This irresistible sampling of NYC’s rich food heritage takes readers on a cultural and historical journey from Brooklyn to the Bronx and beyond.
 
 Whether you're digging into a slice of cherry cheesecake, burning your tongue on a piece of Jamaican jerk chicken, or slurping the broth from a juicy soup dumpling, eating in New York City is a culinary adventure unlike any other in the world.

Gastropolis explores the historical, cultural, and personal relationship between New Yorkers and the food they eat. Beginning with the origins of local favorites, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book looks back to early farming practices and the pre-European fare of the Leni Lenape. Essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals.

 Touching on everything from religion to nutrition; agriculture to economics; and politics to psychology, Gastropolis tells a multifaceted story of immigration, amalgamation, and the making of New York’s distinctively delicious flavor

Gastropolis: Food & New York City

Frederick Douglass Opie

“Opie delves into the history books to find true soul in the food of the South, including its place in the politics of black America.”—NPR.org
 
 Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas.

 Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945, Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.
 
 “Opie goes back to the sources and traces soul food’s development over the centuries. He shows how Southern slavery, segregation, and the Great Migration to the North’s urban areas all left their distinctive marks on today’s African American cuisine.”—Booklist
 
 “An insightful portrait of the social and religious relationship between people of African descent and their cuisine.”—FoodReference.com

Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America

“This’s molecular gastronomy is garnished with [his] own rich philosophy of food and flavor” in a book that reveals the science behind everyday cooking (Nature).

 In Kitchen Mysteries, Hervé This—international celebrity and founder of molecular gastronomy—offers a second helping of his world-renowned insight into the science of cooking, answering such fundamental questions as what causes vegetables to change color when cooked and how to keep a soufflé from falling. He illuminates abstract concepts with practical advice and concrete examples—for instance, how sautéing in butter chemically alters the molecules of mushrooms—so that cooks of every stripe can thoroughly comprehend the scientific principles of food. 

 By sharing the empirical principles chefs have valued for generations, Hervé This adds another dimension to the suggestions of cookbook authors. He shows how to adapt recipes to available ingredients and how to modify proposed methods to the utensils at hand. His revelations make difficult recipes easier to attempt and allow for even more creativity and experimentation. Promising to answer your most compelling kitchen questions, Hervé This continues to make the complex science of food digestible to the cook.

 “Cooks who want to learn more about the chemistry and physics that make their efforts possible will discover useful things here.”—Booklist

 “This has made invisible processes visible, revealed the mysteries, and the bread has risen, baked, and been enjoyed.”—Appetite for Books

 “[An] eye-opening book.”—Portsmouth Herald

 “Kitchen Mysteries is another tour de force for the French scientific chef . . . Highly Recommended.”—Choice

Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking

“Taking kitchen science to a whole new (molecular) level, Hervé This is changing the way France---and the world—cooks.”—Gourmet
 
 Bringing the instruments and experimental techniques of the laboratory into the kitchen, Hervé This—international celebrity and founder of molecular gastronomy—uses recent research in the chemistry, physics, and biology of food to challenge traditional ideas about cooking and eating. What he discovers will entertain, instruct, and intrigue cooks, gourmets, and scientists alike.

Molecular Gastronomy is filled with practical tips, provocative suggestions, and penetrating insights. This begins by reexamining and debunking a variety of time-honored rules and dictums about cooking and presents new and improved ways of preparing a variety of dishes from quiches and quenelles to steak and hard-boiled eggs. Looking to the future, This imagines new cooking methods and proposes novel dishes. A chocolate mousse without eggs? A flourless chocolate cake baked in the microwave? Molecular Gastronomy explains how to make them. This also shows us how to cook perfect French fries, why a soufflé rises and falls, how long to cool champagne, when to season a steak, the right way to cook pasta, how the shape of a wine glass affects the taste of wine, why chocolate turns white, and how salt modifies tastes.
 
 “A captivating little book.”—Economist
 
 “This book, praiseworthy for its scientific rigor, will hold a special appeal for anyone who relishes the debunking of culinary myths.”—Saveur
 
 “Will broaden the way you think about food.”—The New York Sun

 “A wonderful book . . . it will appeal to anyone with an interest in the science of cooking.”—O Chef

Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor

James E. McWilliams

A colorful, spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America.
 
 Confronted by unfamiliar animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as “fit for swine,” became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine.
 
 While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a “culinary declaration of independence,” prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define the cuisine of the United States—a shift that imbued values that continue to shape the nation’s attitudes to this day.
 
“A lively and informative read.” —TheNew Yorker