Product Description

Hervé This (pronounced "Teess") is an internationally renowned chemist, a popular French television personality, a bestselling cookbook author, a longtime collaborator with the famed French chef Pierre Gagnaire, and the only person to hold a doctorate in molecular gastronomy, a cutting-edge field he pioneered. Bringing the instruments and experimental techniques of the laboratory into the kitchen, This 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, This's first work to appear in English, 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. He goes on to discuss the physiology of flavor and explores how the brain perceives tastes, how chewing affects food, and how the tongue reacts to various stimuli. Examining the molecular properties of bread, ham, foie gras, and champagne, the book analyzes what happens as they are baked, cured, cooked, and chilled.

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13876 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Originally published in France, This's book documents the sensory phenomena of eating and uses basic physics to put to bed many culinary myths. In each short chapter This presents a piece of debatable conventional wisdom-such as whether it is better to make a stock by placing meat in already boiling water, or water before it is boiled-and gives its history, often quoting famous French chefs, before making scientific pronouncements. In the chapter on al dente pasta, for instance, This discusses pasta-making experiments, the science behind cooking it and whether it is better to use oil or butter to prevent it from sticking. Most of the discussions revolve around common practices and phenomenon-chilling wine, why spices are spicy, how to best cool a hot drink-but more than a few are either irrelevant or Franco-specific (such as the chapters on quenelles and preparing fondue). This's experimentation, however, is not for the mildly curious, but readers unafraid to, say, microwave mayonnaise will find many ideas here.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Scientific American
A well-known chemist, a popular French television personality, a best-selling cookbook author, the first person to hold a doctorate in molecular gastronomy, and, coincidentally, a former editor at Pour la Science, the French edition of Scientific American. All these appellation come together in Hervé This, a scholar-gastronome who now has his first book available in English. One of the founders of molecular gastronomy, which brings the instruments and experimental techniques of the lab into the kitchen, the author blends practical tips and provocative suggestions with serious discussions—about how the brain perceives tastes, for example, and how chewing affects food.

Editors of Scientific American

Review

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

"This has written an interesting and timely combination of our everyday experience with sophisticated science." -- Claudia Kousoulas, Appetite for Books

"Mr. This's book will broaden the way you think about food." -- New York Sun

"He is revered by the revered." -- JJ Goode, epicurious.com

"It is a wonderful book... it will appeal to anyone with an interest in the science of cooking." -- O Chef

"This's book is for anyone who likes to eat or cook... Highly Recommended." -- Choice

"This offers some though-provoking opportunities for play in the kitchen." -- Pagosa Springs Sun

"This book, praiseworthy for its scientific rigor, will hold a special appeal for anyone who relishes the debunking of culinary myths." -- Todd Coleman, Saveur

"A fresh approach... That will entertain and enlighten anyone interested in the process of cooking and the enjoyment of food." -- Raymond J. Shively, Jr., The Bloomsbury Review

"Anyone with an inordinate passion for cooking would love this book." -- Mia Stainsby, Vancouver Sun

"A timely addition... Suitable for both scientists and the lay public." -- Thorvald Pedersen, EMBO Reports

"This book is laden with science while rendering a clear approach to flavor." -- Academia

"[A] captivating little book." -- The Economist

Customer Reviews

Not what you're used to......
If you're thinking about buying this book, you are interested in the chemistry of food and have probably read Robert Wolke's "What Einstein Told his Cook" or Joe Schwarcz's "That's the way the Cookie Crumbles" or perhaps even the paragon of English-language food chemistry: Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking". If you haven't, I recommend you start with one of those first ("Einstein" would be my #1 choice).
Why? Because those books are better written and about topics that are of more general interest to a North American audience. Molecular Gastronomy is unabashedly FRENCH - which is an excellent thing, but surprising if you're not expecting it. The foods it focuses on are French foods, the research it cites is French research, and I suspect even the translator has French as his first language. So, for example, this book discusses the "Perfect Sabayon" - a lovely culinary question, however one that many Americans (even "foodie" Americans) might find less interesting than the question of cookies going stale (as covered in Schwarcz). The translation is odd.... it is clear, in reading it, that it wasn't originally written in English. Some particularly French phrasing persists in the translation and I am also not convinced that the translator had as extensive a chemical vocabulary as was called for (for example, the phrase "vitreous transition temperature" is used, where "glass transition temperature" is the term used in most materials science texts).
As other reviewers have commented, the vignettes themselves may leave something to be desired. Each chapter is quite brief (Schwartcz's work is similar), so may not have the text to go into the depth a reader might desire. However, the real strength of this work is that it addresses interesting food/chemical questions that aren't being covered by the North American writers.... there's a lot of wine, cheese, and emulsified sauce in this book that you don't see anywhere else.

Exploring the Science behind Cooking
Cooking, which has certainly been around for a long time, has been treated more as an art than a science. The recipies and techniques that we follow are handed cown from parent to child, or since writing was invented from chef to student.

But do many of these procedures make sense. Why do we have such traditional ideas of cooking that seem almost cast in stone with little or no evidence that this is indeed the best way to do things.

In this book M. This states a principle, but carrying it further he researches where this principle originated, and then conducts carefully measured experiments to see if this is true. For instance in making beef stock, the rule says put the meat into cold water and increase the temperature gradually. What happens if you put the meat into boiling water? Or what is the difference in Cheeses that are made from milk from cows that had south facing fields when compared to cows on fields that faced a northern slope. What about if the cow was fed silage (wet grass stored in silow where it ferments)? And what's the best way to test whiskey?

That's the idea, here is the analysis of cooking taken to a scientific level. It's a fascinating book for one interested in more than just the mechanics of cooking. I was reminded of Russ Parson's book 'How to Read a French Fry.'

Very well written, almost too technical
Mr. This has written a well-developed group of essays, really scientific reports, on aspects of cuisine. This is neither a consideration of cooking artistry or technique, but rather varied explorations of the scientific principles behind the transformation of materials in food science. I found many of the essays interesting although some have less relevance to my kitchen than others. Some essays are clearly written for other food industry professionals--the discussion of vinaigrette includes the xanthan gum, et al, which home cooks generally don't use to stabilize their vinaigrettes. Where Mr. This gets really interesting is in his multi-essay development of emulsions (mayonnaise, vinaigrette, flan, quiche, cream, etc.), gels, and the chemistry behind them. I am already excited to try his suggestions for a chocolate 'dispersion'. In fact, I would recommend to Mr. This, should he write another book for a more general audience, to focus on the emulsion and the gel as central concepts of his cuisine, which have opened up new potential worlds of innovation. Throughout the book he strikes a good balance between respect for tradition (as a source of preliminary hypotheses to be tested) and innovation--his discussion of potential new two-phase cooking techniques from a complete matrix was quite French in its precision and dream of new potentials. Not to be missed, once you have made it through the book, is his witty and worthy glossary.

The writing is quite scientific and usually, but not always, well translated from French. In places this irritated me, such as an appositive "Mr. X, he who does such and such, walked..." (not the exact quote), the 'he who does such and such' being a word-for-word translation of the French "celui qui fait...". However this was an irritation and not an impediment.

I do strongly recommend this book although it is NOT the best for a general foodie-science geek who wants only to understand the principles behind most common household cooking techniques. That is done much better by Alton Brown, et al and this book presupposes such knowledge, and more. It is a more advanced text and a look into the new world of 'molecular gastronomy' as a science and the brave new world it is ushering in.