Howard Hillman's "Kitchen Science"
I read both Harold McGee's books on the science of food a long time ago, back in the eighties when they came out. I re-read them just a couple of months back. My impression then and my impression now is that they're not really the greatest for practical cooks, and they get boring after a short time. Sure, he has interesting factoids here and there about particular food substances, what they're composed of and how they're digested, but they're not the kind of books you can go to with specific questions.
Howard Hillman's "Kitchen Science" is very different. Not only does Hillman appear to have just as much of a grasp on science as McGee, he also understands practical cooking and the kinds of questions real kitchen people wonder about and ask. The entire book is organized into questions and answers, the answers being quite short, either a paragraph or two or three paragraphs at most. And it's all interesting enough just to sit down and read from beginning to end. My wife (who's usually quite positive that when it comes to cooking she knows it all, but sometimes is candid enough to admit there are things she doesn't) was amazed to find plenty of things she didn't know.
Questions such as: "Why is it ludicrous to cook with champagne?", "Why is a sourdough baguette denser and more acidic than a standard baguette?", "Why must vegetables be blanched before freezing?", "Can I get lead poisoning from glazed pottery kitchenware?", "Why should I simmer rather than boil egg-flour dumplings?", "Why does it usually take twice as long to roast than to boil or steam a meat?", "Is the flesh juicier and more flavorful if a fish is cooked with its head and tail on?", "Why are refrigerated eggs easier to separate than room temperature ones:?", and "Why do homemade vinaigrette sauces sometimes sink to the bottom of the salad bowl?" That should give you an idea, but he has hundreds of these in the book.
I'm sure that expert chefs pretty much know all this stuff. But for those of us who aren't professionals, this is a valuable and very interesting book. It's in paperback and they have it at Amazon and other online places. And it's a fun read!
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