Modernist Cuisine
Encyclopedia
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a cookbook
by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold
, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. It was published by The Cooking Lab on 14 March 2011. The book is an encyclopedia and a guide to the science of contemporary cooking. The 6 volumes cover history and fundamentals, techniques and equipment, animals and plants, ingredients and preparation, plated dish recipes and one last volume kitchen manual. At the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2010 the book was named "the most important cookbook of the first ten years of the 21st century" and was introduced in the hall of fame. Containing 2,438 pages and weighing in at 23.7 kilograms (52.2 lb), the book has been described as the “The cookbook to end all cookbooks.”
. He is also scientist, having earned advanced degrees in geophysics, space physics, and theoretical and mathematical physics, done post-doctoral research with Stephen Hawking
at Cambridge University, and worked for many years as the chief technology officer and chief strategist of Microsoft
. Drawing on his food and science skills, Myhrvold performed experiments and calculations to generate tables of times and temperatures for cooking various foods sous vide. When he posted these tables to eGullet, thus answering the question he himself had asked in that forum about one year earlier, someone suggested that he should write a book. In 2006 he began to do so, but soon realized that he could not write the book he wanted himself; for the book to accomplish all that he wanted, it would have to be produced by a team with proper equipment.
Myhrvold started buying equipment for the research kitchen in the Intellectual Ventures
lab. Much of the equipment was standard cooking equipment, but it also included items such as rotor-stator homogenizer
s, ultrahigh-pressure homogenizers, freeze-dryers, a 50 G
ultracentrifuge
, ultrasonic baths, and rotary evaporators. The laboratory already included other high-tech and industrial equipment, such as a weapons-grade laser
, a 100-ton hydraulic press
, a large water-jet cutter, an electrical discharge machine
, and automated milling machine
s.
Myhrvold and Wayt Gibbs, an executive editor at Intellectual Ventures who served as the editor-in-chief and project manager for the book, also started hiring writers and editors, research assistants, photo editors, and an art director. First hired was Chris Young, who had just stopped his work of leading the development kitchen in Heston Blumenthal
's restaurant The Fat Duck
in England. Chris then recruited Maxime Bilet, also from The Fat Duck, who led the team of research chefs that developed and tested the 1,522 recipes in the book. Photographer Ryan Matthew Smith joined the team after answering an ad on craigslist seeking a photo editor. The book team ultimately grew to include more than 50 staff and freelance contributors plus 14 outside experts who reviewed various chapters of the book. At the high point of the project, 36 researchers, chefs, and editors were working simultaneously on the book.
Initially the book was planned to be 150 pages on cooking sous vide in water baths and combi ovens, along with some scientific fundamantals relevant to those techniques. It gradually grew in scope; by late 2009, the book plan had expanded to 1,500 pages, and when finally printed it was 2,438 pages. The exact production cost of the book has not been announced, but Myhrvold confirmed that it cost more than to produce the first printing of 6,000 copies, which sold out shortly after the publication date in March 2011. In April 2011, The Cooking Lab ordered a second printing of 25,000 copies.
Volume 1, History and Fundamentals, includes a chapter that chronicles the intellectual history of culinary movements, culminating with a detailed history of the Modernist movement as it appeared in cooking beginning in the 1980s. Also in Volume 1 are chapters on microbiology
, food safety
, food and health, heat and energy, and the physics of food and water.
Volume 2, Techniques and Equipment, includes a chapter on the science and techniques of traditional cooking, which it explains by making extensive use of illustrations and photography. This volume also contains chapters on modern cooking approaches, including baking in combi ovens
and water-vapor ovens, cooking sous vide, and cooking with a wide range of advanced equipment and ingredients, from homogenizers and vacuum pumps to liquid nitrogen
and dry ice
.
Volume 3, Animals and Plants, contains just two chapters: one on meat and another on plant foods. Scientific fundamentals about these ingredients are presented along with basic cooking techniques, advanced cooking techniques, and many recipes.
A similar approach is taken in Volume 4, Ingredients and Preparations, to explaining the use of ingredients more commonly associated with Modernist cooking, including thickening and gelling agent
s, emulsion
s, and foam
s. This volume also contains chapters on wine
and coffee
.
The fifth volume, Plated-Dish Recipes, consists primarily of 48 more complex recipes, each of which includes both a main dish and various accompaniments. The index to the set appears in Volume 5, along with two glossaries and a set of reference tables.
Cookbook
A cookbook is a kitchen reference that typically contains a collection of recipes. Modern versions may also include colorful illustrations and advice on purchasing quality ingredients or making substitutions...
by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Paul Myhrvold , formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. Myhrvold, usually with coinventors, holds 17 U.S. patents assigned to Microsoft and has applied for more than 500 patents. In addition, Myhrvold and coinventors hold 115 U.S...
, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. It was published by The Cooking Lab on 14 March 2011. The book is an encyclopedia and a guide to the science of contemporary cooking. The 6 volumes cover history and fundamentals, techniques and equipment, animals and plants, ingredients and preparation, plated dish recipes and one last volume kitchen manual. At the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2010 the book was named "the most important cookbook of the first ten years of the 21st century" and was introduced in the hall of fame. Containing 2,438 pages and weighing in at 23.7 kilograms (52.2 lb), the book has been described as the “The cookbook to end all cookbooks.”
History
The idea for the book came up when Myhrvold acquired a temperature-controlled water bath for sous vide cooking in 2003. He tried to find information about this new cooking technique, which had been invented in 1960’s and was in use at many restaurants by 2003. He could find only a few articles and one book (in Spanish) on sous vide, however. He posted messages on eGullet, a high-end cooking forum and found out that there was no information. Myhrvold has attended Ecole de Cuisine la Varenne, a cooking school in Burgundy, France and has also cooked part-time at Rover's, a French restaurant in Seattle owned by Thierry RautureauThierry Rautureau
Thierry Rautureau, nicknamed The Chef In The Hat, is the chef/owner of Rover's and Luc Restaurants in Seattle, Washington. Rautureau was born in the Muscadet region of France, apprenticed in Anjou, France, and at twenty moved to the United States to work at several fine restaurants...
. He is also scientist, having earned advanced degrees in geophysics, space physics, and theoretical and mathematical physics, done post-doctoral research with Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...
at Cambridge University, and worked for many years as the chief technology officer and chief strategist of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. Drawing on his food and science skills, Myhrvold performed experiments and calculations to generate tables of times and temperatures for cooking various foods sous vide. When he posted these tables to eGullet, thus answering the question he himself had asked in that forum about one year earlier, someone suggested that he should write a book. In 2006 he began to do so, but soon realized that he could not write the book he wanted himself; for the book to accomplish all that he wanted, it would have to be produced by a team with proper equipment.
Myhrvold started buying equipment for the research kitchen in the Intellectual Ventures
Intellectual Ventures
Intellectual Ventures is a private company notable for being one of the top-five owners of U.S. patents, as of 2011. Its business model has a focus on developing a large patent portfolio and licensing these patents to companies. Publicly, it states that a major goal is to assist small inventors...
lab. Much of the equipment was standard cooking equipment, but it also included items such as rotor-stator homogenizer
Homogenizer
A homogenizer is a piece of laboratory equipment used for the homogenization of various types of material, such as tissue, plant, food, soil, and many others. Many different models have been developed using various physical technologies for disruption. The 'mortar and pestle', already used for...
s, ultrahigh-pressure homogenizers, freeze-dryers, a 50 G
Gravitational constant
The gravitational constant, denoted G, is an empirical physical constant involved in the calculation of the gravitational attraction between objects with mass. It appears in Newton's law of universal gravitation and in Einstein's theory of general relativity. It is also known as the universal...
ultracentrifuge
Ultracentrifuge
The ultracentrifuge is a centrifuge optimized for spinning a rotor at very high speeds, capable of generating acceleration as high as 2,000,000 g . There are two kinds of ultracentrifuges, the preparative and the analytical ultracentrifuge...
, ultrasonic baths, and rotary evaporators. The laboratory already included other high-tech and industrial equipment, such as a weapons-grade laser
Laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
, a 100-ton hydraulic press
Hydraulic press
A hydraulic is a machine using a hydraulic cylinder to generate a compressive force. It uses the hydraulic equivalenta mechanical lever, and was also known as a Bramah press after the inventor, Joseph Bramah, of England. He invented and was issued a patent on this press in 1795...
, a large water-jet cutter, an electrical discharge machine
Electrical discharge machining
Electric discharge machining , sometimes colloquially also referred to as spark machining, spark eroding, burning, die sinking or wire erosion, is a manufacturing process whereby a desired shape is obtained using electrical discharges...
, and automated milling machine
Milling machine
A milling machine is a machine tool used to machine solid materials. Milling machines are often classed in two basic forms, horizontal and vertical, which refers to the orientation of the main spindle. Both types range in size from small, bench-mounted devices to room-sized machines...
s.
Myhrvold and Wayt Gibbs, an executive editor at Intellectual Ventures who served as the editor-in-chief and project manager for the book, also started hiring writers and editors, research assistants, photo editors, and an art director. First hired was Chris Young, who had just stopped his work of leading the development kitchen in Heston Blumenthal
Heston Blumenthal
Heston Marc Blumenthal OBE is an English chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005...
's restaurant The Fat Duck
The Fat Duck
The Fat Duck is a restaurant run by chef Heston Blumenthal in Bray, Berkshire, England. The restaurant is known for its menu of unusual dishes, created following the principles of molecular gastronomy examples include: "snail porridge", "sardine on toast sorbet", "bacon and egg ice cream", and...
in England. Chris then recruited Maxime Bilet, also from The Fat Duck, who led the team of research chefs that developed and tested the 1,522 recipes in the book. Photographer Ryan Matthew Smith joined the team after answering an ad on craigslist seeking a photo editor. The book team ultimately grew to include more than 50 staff and freelance contributors plus 14 outside experts who reviewed various chapters of the book. At the high point of the project, 36 researchers, chefs, and editors were working simultaneously on the book.
Initially the book was planned to be 150 pages on cooking sous vide in water baths and combi ovens, along with some scientific fundamantals relevant to those techniques. It gradually grew in scope; by late 2009, the book plan had expanded to 1,500 pages, and when finally printed it was 2,438 pages. The exact production cost of the book has not been announced, but Myhrvold confirmed that it cost more than to produce the first printing of 6,000 copies, which sold out shortly after the publication date in March 2011. In April 2011, The Cooking Lab ordered a second printing of 25,000 copies.
Structure
Modernist Cuisine consists of five major volumes plus a spiral-bound kitchen manual, which reprints recipes and reference tables from the major volumes on water-resistant paper for use while cooking.Volume 1, History and Fundamentals, includes a chapter that chronicles the intellectual history of culinary movements, culminating with a detailed history of the Modernist movement as it appeared in cooking beginning in the 1980s. Also in Volume 1 are chapters on microbiology
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...
, food safety
Food safety
Food safety is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards....
, food and health, heat and energy, and the physics of food and water.
Volume 2, Techniques and Equipment, includes a chapter on the science and techniques of traditional cooking, which it explains by making extensive use of illustrations and photography. This volume also contains chapters on modern cooking approaches, including baking in combi ovens
Combi steamer
A combi steamer is a professional cooking appliance that combines the functionality of a convection oven and a steam cooker. That is, it can produce dry heat, moist heat or a combination of the two at various temperatures. Therefore it is fit for many culinary applications including baking,...
and water-vapor ovens, cooking sous vide, and cooking with a wide range of advanced equipment and ingredients, from homogenizers and vacuum pumps to liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen is nitrogen in a liquid state at a very low temperature. It is produced industrially by fractional distillation of liquid air. Liquid nitrogen is a colourless clear liquid with density of 0.807 g/mL at its boiling point and a dielectric constant of 1.4...
and dry ice
Dry ice
Dry ice, sometimes referred to as "Cardice" or as "card ice" , is the solid form of carbon dioxide. It is used primarily as a cooling agent. Its advantages include lower temperature than that of water ice and not leaving any residue...
.
Volume 3, Animals and Plants, contains just two chapters: one on meat and another on plant foods. Scientific fundamentals about these ingredients are presented along with basic cooking techniques, advanced cooking techniques, and many recipes.
A similar approach is taken in Volume 4, Ingredients and Preparations, to explaining the use of ingredients more commonly associated with Modernist cooking, including thickening and gelling agent
Thickening agent
Thickening agents, or thickeners, is the term applied to substances which increase the viscosity of a solution or liquid/solid mixture without substantially modifying its other properties; although most frequently applied to foods where the target property is taste, the term also is applicable to...
s, emulsion
Emulsion
An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible . Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloids. Although the terms colloid and emulsion are sometimes used interchangeably, emulsion is used when both the dispersed and the...
s, and foam
Foam
-Definition:A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping gas in a liquid or solid in a divided form, i.e. by forming gas regions inside liquid regions, leading to different kinds of dispersed media...
s. This volume also contains chapters on wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
and coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
.
The fifth volume, Plated-Dish Recipes, consists primarily of 48 more complex recipes, each of which includes both a main dish and various accompaniments. The index to the set appears in Volume 5, along with two glossaries and a set of reference tables.
Response
- David ChangDavid ChangDavid Chang is a noted Korean-American chef. He is chef/owner of the Momofuku restaurant group, which includes Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Má Pêche, Milk Bar and Momofuku Ko in New York City, the latter for which he was awarded two Michelin stars in 2009, and Momofuku Seiōbo in...
of Momofuku Ko stated "Only someone like Nathan could do something this comprehensive and rigorous, and we will probably never see another cookbook like it again." - "This book will change the way we understand the kitchen." --Ferran AdriàFerran AdriàFerran Adrià i Acosta is a Catalan chef born on May 14, 1962 in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. He was the head chef of the El Bulli restaurant in Roses on the Costa Brava, and is considered one of the best chefs in the world.-Career:...
of El BulliEl BullielBulli was a Michelin 3-star restaurant near the town of Roses, Catalonia, Spain, run by chef Ferran Adrià. The small restaurant overlooked Cala Montjoi, a bay on Catalonia's Costa Brava, and has been described as "the most imaginative generator of haute cuisine on the planet" and does a great... - "A fascinating overview of the techniques of modern gastronomy." --Heston BlumenthalHeston BlumenthalHeston Marc Blumenthal OBE is an English chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005...
- "Modernist Cuisine is a landmark contribution to the craft of cooking and our understanding of its underlying principles. Its scale, detail, and eye-opening graphics are unmatched by any other book on the subject. It will be an invaluable resource for anyone with a serious interest in cooking techniques, whether the professional innovations of the last few decades or the long traditions on which they build." --Harold McGeeHarold McGeeHarold McGee is an American author who writes about the chemistry, technique and history of food and cooking and has written two seminal books on kitchen science. His first book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen was initially published in 1984. A greatly revised second...
- "A breathtaking new benchmark in understanding cooking, Modernist Cuisine is destined to be as important a work for the 21st century as Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine was for the 20th century." --David KinchDavid KinchDavid Kinch is the American Chef-Proprietor of Manresa Restaurant in Los Gatos, California, which has been awarded two Michelin stars for five consecutive years...
- “The most important book in the culinary arts since Escoffier.” --Tim Zagat
- “The cookbook to end all cookbooks.” --David ChangDavid ChangDavid Chang is a noted Korean-American chef. He is chef/owner of the Momofuku restaurant group, which includes Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Má Pêche, Milk Bar and Momofuku Ko in New York City, the latter for which he was awarded two Michelin stars in 2009, and Momofuku Seiōbo in...
- "Amazing! Unparalleled in its breadth and depth." --Wylie DufresneWylie DufresneWylie Dufresne is the chef and owner of wd~50 restaurant in Manhattan. Dufresne is a leading American proponent of molecular gastronomy, the movement to incorporate science and new techniques in the preparation and presentation of food.-Early life:...