• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
  • Showing only topics in ~food with the tag "science". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. A list of commonly recommended cookery books

      Here's a list of cookery books that are frequently recommended in various forums when people ask for good cookery books. These are not in any kind of order. Please add any books that I've missed!...

      Here's a list of cookery books that are frequently recommended in various forums when people ask for good cookery books.

      These are not in any kind of order. Please add any books that I've missed! I'm sure there are lots of great books that I haven't heard of. I wanted to link to a bookshop, but I got stuck with that so I used Wordery, unless they didn't have it in which case I link to Amazon. Some of these books have hardback and soft-cover versions, or newer editions, so go careful with the links because I just link to any version of the book. I have done no research at all into the authors or illustrators here, so if I've included people who are toxic arseholes please do let me know and I'll fix it. (This post is episode 2 of "DanBC goes down a rabbit hole and dumps the results onto Tildes").


      Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking - Samin Nosrat and Wendy MacNaughton.

      A review from Kitchn: 8 cooks on why "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" is such a special, unlikely, hit

      A lot of people love this book. Beginners say it gave them a bit more confidence, and good home cooks say it helped elevate their cooking by giving them usable information.


      How to Cook Everything - Mark Bittman.

      A review from Kitchn

      How to Cook Everything - the basics - Mark Bittman. A review from ShelfAwareness.

      A lot of people don't know how to cook, and have never cooked anything. Mark Bittman's books are often recommended to this group of people. And the books are excellent sources of information, and so they're useful to lots of people. They're very clear and easy to use.


      Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan.

      A VERY SHORT, almost bullet point, review from FiveBooks And a longer review from LitHub

      She wrote two books in the 1970s, and these were combined and updated in the 1990s for this book. These books are widely credited as introducing people outside Italy to "authentic" Italian cooking. LitHub review has already said everything that I'd want to say about this, but better than I could.


      On Food and Cooking: The science and lore of the kitchen - Harold McGee.

      A Kitchn review

      This is a heavy duty book about the science of food. It's often described as the best single reference book for the science of food and cooking.


      Food Lab: Better home cooking through science - J. Kenji López-Alt.

      A review from Chemistry World

      Surely everyone knows J. Kenji. He's really approachable. He give you science, but it's actionable and achievable.


      In Bibi's Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean - Hawa Hassan, Julia Turshen.

      A mini-review from Kitchn. So, I'm cheating here because I haven't seen this recommended by anyone but I wanted more books that are not Euro-US focussed. This book focuses on food from Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Comoros

      Each chapter starts with a short geo-political intro. You'll be familiar if you've ever read the CIA World Factbook. It then has a short interview with a grandmother, and then it gives some recipes.


      Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making - Wordery link - James Peterson.

      A review from MostlyFood

      "Don’t be put off by the size of this book. It’s true that it’s as big as a small piece of furniture but it’s as big as that for a good reason. There isn’t any padding in Sauces. It’s cover-to-cover solid information that will be welcomed by anyone wanting to perfect sauce-making. Nothing seems to be omitted or overlooked. Every imaginable sauce is described, including Asian Sauces which have been added since the publication of the first edition."

      Lots of people like that "no padding" feature.


      How to Eat: The pleasures and principles of good food - Nigella Lawson.

      A review by Food 52

      "Thinking back on the lifespan of this formative book, I can’t help but feel that it’s to the recipes in it, and of course to Lawson herself, that I owe much of my confidence in the kitchen today."

      Lots of people just want to cook tasty food and they're not bothered by The Science. Lawson's books are excellent if you want great home cooking.


      The Professional Chef - The Culinary Institute of America

      There are lots of versions of this book. The current version will be expensive. The older version are usually very similar and will be much cheaper.

      Home cooks often get into weird habits and that's fine - it's your kitchen, do what works for you. But if you want to get better in the kitchen by improving your techniques and skills this is the book for you.

      25 votes
    2. Planet Money: Fries Of The Future

      From the transcript: By 1988, for the first time, more fast-food orders were taken at a drive-through window than at the restaurant. And this was a problem for the wimpy french fry because by the...

      From the transcript:

      By 1988, for the first time, more fast-food orders were taken at a drive-through window than at the restaurant. And this was a problem for the wimpy french fry because by the time you got home from the drive-through, the fries were no good.

      [...]

      So back then - almost 20, 25 years ago - Lamb Weston invented a coating called Stealth, which was their secret coating that you couldn't see and you couldn't tell was on the french fry, but it lasted - it was crispier longer, up to 12 to 15 minutes.

      [...]

      But this potato company has a new problem now - delivery. And a 12- to 15-minute lasting Stealth french fry isn't going to cut it because delivery takes longer than a drive-through. The average delivery wait time in a busy city is 20 to 30 minutes because drivers pick up multiple orders and make multiple stops.

      [...]

      They're starting to pitch these fries to fast food chains now. So they're not in stores yet, but Deb says they could be in a couple months. You won't know it's a crispy on delivery fry just like you don't know when you're eating a stealth fry. You'll just know you had a better french fry delivery experience.

      More

      6 votes