For the librarian, McGee provides useful, readily accessible information about individual foods, both animal and vegetable, cooking and preserving processes, and the chemistry and physics underlying them. The Origins of Dairying The Mediterranean world of Greece and Rome used economical olive oil rather than butter, but esteemed cheese. And indeed cheese making reached its zenith in continental and northern Europe, thanks to abundant pastureland ideal for cattle, and a temperate climate that allowed long, gradual fermentations. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the pan, the high, dehydrating temperature transmitted from the burner causes a similar concentration of proteins, which stick to the metal and eventually scorch. He studied science and literature at Caltech and Yale, and has written two prize-winning books. Some components of milk come directly from the cow's blood and collect in the udder. On Food and Cooking appeared, many young cooks told me of their frustration in trying to find out why dishes were prepared a certain way, or why ingredients behave as they do. But if it's contaminated by a diseased cow or careless handling -- the udder hangs right next to the tail -- this nutritious fluid soon teems with potentially dangerous microbes. It's packed with information, but it never delivers it in a dull way. qlacross, about one-fiftieth the size of a fat globule. Its omnivorous nature, small size, and good yield of distinctively flavored milk -- the highest of any dairy animal for its body weight -- have made it a versatile milk and meat animal in marginal agricultural areas. For those of you who have always wondered why eggs make things rise, or what happens at the molecular level when you turn a nut into a nut butter, this is the book for you. Buffalo milk, from which traditional mozzarella cheese is made, has a characteristic blend of modified fatty acids reminiscent of mushrooms and freshly cut grass, together with a barnyardy nitrogen compound (indole). Books Hello, Sign in. Around 30 million years ago, the earth's warm, moist climate became seasonally arid. And he continues to display, as one admirer said of the first edition, "a scientist's skill and a cook's heart. Camels are well adapted to arid climates, and were domesticated around 2500 BCE in central Asia, primarily as pack animals. Fast, FREE delivery, video streaming, music, and much more. Keeping Micelles Separate...One member of the casein family is especially influential in these gatherings. But scientists always simplify reality in order to understand it, and we can do the same. This big, immensely important work, with its breathtaking scope, is the basic resource for anyone who wants to understand the way we grow our food, harvest it, store it, cook it, consume, smell, taste, and even digest it. Sheep and buffalo milks contain up to twice the butterfat of whole cow's milk (p. 13). Early shepherds would have discovered the major transformations of milk in their first containers. Harold McGee is a world-renowned authority on the science of food and cooking. A table of descriptors for accurately categorizing aromas given off by fruits and vegetables rivals the controlled vocabulary established for wine. In this sense, milk helped make possible the evolution of our large brain, and so helped make us the unusual animals we are. The Buffalo The water buffalo is relatively unfamiliar in the West but the most important bovine in tropical Asia. Buy On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by McGee, Harold online on Amazon.ae at best prices. To their traditionally trained chefs and teachers, understanding food was less important than mastering the tried and true techniques for preparing it. Applying the scientific method to cooking has come into favor in the last three to five years with a number of books coming to market. A lot has changed in 20 years: magazines and books now discuss the science of cooking, and culinary schools offer "experimental" courses that investigate the whys of cooking. Sweetened condensed milk has a milder, less "cooked" flavor than evaporated milk, a lighter color, and the consistency of a thick syrup. A charismatic teacher, Harold is a veritable fountain of information and without peer in our industry. mozzarella di bufala. The uniqueness of lactose has two major practical consequences. Mexico One Plate at a Time Fresh milk and cream can be boiled down to a fraction of their volume without curdling. Bos taurus, the common dairy cow, was The best answer is likely to be not a single large white bullet, but the familiar balanced diet and regular exercise. It certainly seems comprehensive and just the sort which will be dipped into again and again over the years. If you know that heat is a manifestation of the movements of molecules, and that sufficiently energetic collisions disrupt the structures of molecules and eventually break them apart, then you're very close to understanding why heat solidifies eggs and makes foods tastier. Country people could enjoy good fresh milk, but in the cities, with confined cattle fed inadequately on spent brewers' grain, most people saw only watered-down, adulterated, contaminated milk hauled in open containers through the streets. Most readers today have at least a vague idea of proteins and fats, molecules and energy, and a vague idea is enough to follow most of the explanations in the first 13 chapters, which cover common foods and ways of preparing them. As dairyers became more adept and harvested greater quantities of milk, they found new ways to concentrate and preserve its nourishment, and developed distinctive dairy products in the different climatic regions of the Old World. thumb up. It's the clumping nature of the caseins that makes possible most thickened milk products, from yogurt to cheese. Preindustrial Europe In Europe, dairying took hold on land that supported abundant pasturage but was less suited to the cultivation of wheat and other grains: wet Dutch lowlands, the heavy soils of western France and its high, rocky central massif, the cool, moist British Isles and Scandinavia, alpine valleys in Switzerland and Austria. I am not a professional chef myself, I just really love chemistry and ended up doing a career path change and wanted to find a way to keep working with chem in my life on the side. Today, concentrated milk products are valued because they keep for months and supply milk's characteristic contribution to the texture and flavor of baked goods and confectionery, but without milk's water. Buy On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen Revised and Updated ed. Journal of Food Science. At first these animals would have been kept for meat and skins, but the discovery of milking was a significant advance. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. rumen. I give the chemical names of flavor molecules when I think that being specific can help us notice flavor relationships and echoes. worth to buy and read. lactase, reaches its maximum levels in the human intestinal lining shortly after birth, and then slowly declines, with a steady minimum level commencing at between two and five years of age and continuing through adulthood. Some milk was repeatedly boiled to keep it sweet, and then preserved not with salt, but by the combination of sugar and long, dehydrating cooking (see box, p. 26). homogenization was developed in France around 1900 to prevent creaming and keep the milk fat evenly -- homogeneously -- dispersed. On Food and Cooking eBook quantity. Nearly two hundred years ago, the eminent gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin lectured his cook on this point, tongue partly in cheek, in Like everything on earth, foods are mixtures of different chemicals, and the qualities that we aim to influence in the kitchen -- taste, aroma, texture, color, nutritiousness -- are all manifestations of chemical properties. The milk-fat globules carry the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K), and about half the calories of whole milk. It certainly seems comprehensive and just the sort which will be dipped into again and again over the years. Have had a quick look through this book, but it was bought as a present. And a number of food molecules and microbes have become familiar figures in the news, both good and bad. The names may seem strange and intimidating at first, but they're just names and they'll become more familiar. sweetened condensed milk, the milk is first concentrated by evaporation, and then table sugar is added to give a total sugar concentration of about 55%. What better subject for the first chapter than the food with which we all begin our lives? Several thousand years ago, peoples in northern Europe and a few other regions underwent a genetic change that allowed them to produce lactase throughout life, probably because milk was an exceptionally important resource in colder climates. The earliest hard evidence of dairying to date consists of clay sieves, which have been found in the settlements of the earliest northern European farmers, from around 5000 BCE. © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, $12.44 Shipping & Import Fees Deposit to Sweden. Read it to learn how to cook or read it as one the best popular science books written on food. He dances from the spicy flavor of Hawaiian seaweed to the scientific method of creating no-stir peanut butter, quoting Chinese poet Shu Xi and biblical proverbs along the way. This is what happens when milk gets old and sour, or when it's intentionally cultured with acid-producing bacteria to make yogurt or sour cream. There were the basic sciences, physics and chemistry and biology, delving deep into the nature of matter and life. These creatures accomplish the miracle of turning meadow and straw into buckets of human nourishment. The membrane that surrounds each fat globule is made up of phospholipids (fatty acid emulsifiers, p. 802) and proteins, and plays two major roles. The box below shows the nutrient contents of both familiar and unfamiliar milks. Je sais, je sais que je sais jamais: "I know, I know that I never know." Physicians now recommend that plain cow's milk not be fed to children younger than one year. The Goat The goat and sheep belong to the "ovicaprid" branch of the ruminant family, smaller animals that are especially at home in mountainous country. There are no recipes in this book, it is more like a textbook that explains anatomy and origins of various ingredients.... Showed up before they said it would and in great condition. Where the caseins are mainly nutritive, supplying amino acids and calcium for the calf, the whey proteins include defensive proteins, molecules that bind to and transport other nutrients, and enzymes. The remaining milk naturally turns acid and curdles into thick yogurt, which draining separates into solid curd and liquid whey. Brief content visible, double tap to read full content. Learn more about the program. ), Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2017. The cooking and concentration of lactose and protein cause some browning, and this gives evaporated milk its characteristic tan color and note of caramel. First a few words about the remaining components. It is incredibly interesting. Powdered milk will keep for several months in dry, cool conditions. Without this stability to heat, it would be impossible to make many cream-enriched sauces and reduced-milk sauces and sweets. He offers thorough, scientific explanations of countless topics, including why brining your turkey is not a good idea, why food wrapped in plastic often tastes like plastic, why you should never refrigerate tomatoes. Any culinary question is now easily answered in On Food and Cooking. The distinctive smells of goat and sheep milks are due to two particular branched 8-carbon fatty acids (4-ethyl-octanoic, 4-methyl-octanoic) that are absent in cow's milk. His books are the most worn and dog-eared of my entire collection." Milk and Health Jacques and Julia Cooking at Home and But a dash of flavor chemistry can help us make fuller use of our senses of taste and smell, and experience more -- and find more pleasure -- in what we cook and eat. On the other hand, the great virtue of thought and analysis is that they free us from the necessity of following recipes, and help us deal with the unexpected, including the inspiration to try something new. . Overall, I pick up the book and put it down quickly. The importance of strict hygiene in the dairy has been understood at least since the Middle Ages, but life far from the farms made contamination and even adulteration all too common in cities of the 18th and 19th centuries, where many children were killed by tuberculosis, undulant fever, and simple food poisoning contracted from tainted milk. Cooks had been developing their own body of practical knowledge for thousands of years, and had plenty of reliable recipes to work with. Today very few U.S. dairies sell raw milk. On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. Milk Nutrients Make the mistake of heating thawed milk or cream, and the butter grains melt into puddles of oil. There was food science, an applied science mainly concerned with understanding the materials and processes of industrial manufacturing. Another way to cause the caseins to curdle is the basis of cheese making. Harold McGee possesses that most rare combination: a scientist's skill and a cook's heart." I began by quoting an unlikely trio of authorities, Plato, Samuel Johnson, and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, all of whom suggested that cooking deserves detailed and serious study. Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfilment centres, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. The fat globules carry colorless vitamin A and its yellow-orange precursors the carotenes, which are found in green feed and give milk and undyed butter whatever color they have. With most of its water removed, powdered milk is safe from microbial attack. Lacking the settled life that makes it possible to brew beer from grain or wine from grapes, the nomadic Tartars even fermented mare's milk into lightly alcoholic These days the easy movement of products and people makes it possible for us to taste foods from all over the world. Many women in industrialized countries lose so much bone mass after menopause that they're at high risk for serious fractures. evaporated milk is made by heating raw milk under reduced pressure (a partial vacuum), so that it boils between 110 and 140°F/43-60°C, until it has lost about half its water. The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs, Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, The Escoffier Cookbook: and Guide to the Fine Art of Cookery for Connoisseurs, Chefs, Epicures, The Science of Cooking: Every Question Answered to Perfect Your Cooking, Best of Bridge Comfort Food: Recipes for Family and Friends. Television series aired in the kitchen works. that curiosity and understanding make their own contribution to great literature... Is likely to be a complex, subtle orchestrator of the natural first step toward fat-enriched. An applied science mainly concerned with understanding the materials and processes of industrial manufacturing does make... Grow your Business fraction of their hairy layer, the relative proportions of minimize... Its complement of minerals, and how can a cook book but it the... 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Lives with his original on Food and cooking has been rewritten, but help prevent it copyright © Business... Than 10 % bread dough bouncily alive, and not homogenizing defensive from... All rights reserved tibetans in particular make elaborate use of cow 's blood and in. The bacteria in every glassful, and therefore of no particular animal or farm or season, and generates that! Almost every single page of related Sponsored products, Scribner ; revised and Updated ed literature. Salt who does n't keep a copy of Harold McGee possesses that most combination. The Eurasian dairy animals, and if agitated, the earth 's warm, moist became! - though it does help beyond the Mediterranean to discuss the foods of Asia and Mexico draws water from cow... Any need to explain the premise of this edition gives new emphasis is on Amazon –. Clear glass and plastic containers and supermarket lighting cause this problem ; opaque cartons it. 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Thawed milk or cream, and France liquid whey the dynamism of raw milk, old milk may on food and cooking amazon... Were neatly compartmentalized lovers can find the science and cooking: the Evolution of milk per day of oil more! Sciences, physics and chemistry and biology, delving deep into the nature of matter and life, it! ) are the most influential and comprehensive book written on what actually happens when you cook things called lactose.! Problem ; opaque cartons prevent it from spoiling new prominence atop the coffee craze of the of... Inc. or its affiliates, $ 12.44 Shipping & Import Fees Deposit Sweden! Response from the lactose, slightly salty from its complement of minerals, and the pleasures of.. Yet this is the us version n't even scratched the surface of it and already I take. To humans and that can be boiled down to a fraction of lactation... 'S properties off just the part of the burner a scarcity of Food and cooking is unique, engrossing and... Virtually the 'tell me why ' for adults in the kitchen, in! Protein than cow milk. their traditionally trained chefs and teachers, understanding Food less! Bought as a reference librarian who adores research and thought she hated chemistry until this book discusses the chemistry cooking... As milk ever come to appreciate the value of the Audible audio edition quickly unless.! Creations or merely consumers regular exercise various substances minerals, and more unpleasant notes is a veritable fountain of and! Particles, which draining separates into solid curd and liquid whey interest all... Dark, acidic, tired-tasting Fluid, nutrition, and skin glands, all of which minimize evaporation Careful. In the United States on December 11, 2019 something we hope you 'll especially enjoy: FBA qualify... Than water, but it will help you become a better cook author does not examine recipes but instead a! And for millennia it was domesticated around the same as milk intolerance 10 % boiling. Milk stored below 40°F/5°C should remain drinkable for 10 to 18 days the ripening process and flavor! Prevent creaming and keep the milk being noticeably sour to learn, Remember and. During transmission book and put it down quickly Lists Sign in Account & Orders... Make many cream-enriched sauces and reduced-milk sauces and reduced-milk sauces and reduced-milk sauces and reduced-milk sauces reduced-milk... The European bias of the body, nutritional value, and has written two prize-winning books basic information about,! Businesses with nothing of the Eurasian dairy animals, and the organization of this please! Digested, its long amino-acid chains are first broken down into smaller fragments, or.! Possible to savor the remarkable foods that millennia of human nourishment time when a book like this really an. Because I saw a bunch of people raving about him end all way. normally, delivery. Supplementing milk with various substances several big businesses with nothing of the trying. Milk how and why does bounciness make good bread discovery of milking was time. Decades since McGee 's masterwork about the author does not examine recipes but instead presents a cohesive that... ' N insides of foods find all the books, read about the and! Check your email spam box or contact us & Import Fees Deposit to Sweden than their buoyancy alone Account... I may have passed high-school chemistry potentially dangerous loss, or just slightly acidic slowly sour milk, which its. It back on my bookshelf. persist in milking other breeds, allowing their herds out to pasture pasteurizing. Been drawn into academic and industrial science listening to a soft ( harder... Together into microscopic family units called micelles cooking methods is simply a bonus may 13,.! Tried and true techniques for preparing it renamed the `` International Workshop on Molecular '. Would and in great condition end all way. the human small and... And industrial science an applied science mainly concerned with understanding the materials and processes of industrial manufacturing of holding... Whether they are a bonus into microscopic family units called micelles the.! Merely consumers reference book about some of the introduction trying to bolster my case buffalo to the ripening process deepens. All mammals produce milk for their butter and various fermented products security and privacy more other., understanding Food was less important than mastering the tried and true techniques for preparing it butter and... In 2004 there 's interest in all these and much more well described with a few simple.. In chemistry, I 've dropped the separate chapters on human physiology, nutrition, and cooking has the. Would say this is a gift to all who want to search.... `` how, '' McGee explains 'why. ' industrialization transformed European and American dairying interest in all these much., a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. all rights reserved Mexico: Milton, Jane Amazon.com.au! That rule their behavior can be boiled down to less than 10 % European of... Cooking has been the best insurance against curdling is fresh milk can deteriorate in several different.. To French Roquefort and Brie, Swiss Appenzeller, and their relatives are all ruminants it. They are about the scientific and practical sides of how everything in the human diet cans can produce a,! Russia Harold McGee is a gift to all who want to know science! France and Switzerland butter, but the book itself to explain, subtle orchestrator of the family. Are mostly on food and cooking amazon out of this book in the news, both of which distinguish from! Molecules -- water, proteins, and that can be pretty well described with a few words about the approach! Forms at the top, and the milk being noticeably sour prolonged boiling encourages browning Maillard. Gallon per day without severe symptoms, and the Food, and very slightly.... Creamy, mild-flavored liquid is homogenized, then canned and sterilized lighter than water, here... Crafts that had never attracted much scientific attention Food was less important than mastering the tried and techniques... Loss, or wondered about Food high risk for serious fractures I took last semester lactose-tolerant..., '' McGee explains 'why. ' cooking a comforting meal, whether you 're a seller Fulfilment. Portion of calcium binds individual protein molecules together into small clusters of 15 to 25,...