The New Kitchen Science: A Guide to Knowing the Hows and Whys for Fun and Success in the Kitchen

Rating:
Summary: Very Good Introduction to Kitchen Lore. Not Best Science
Review: `The New Kitchen Science' by culinary journalist Howard Hillman is a new edition of a 20 year old book which uses the question and answer format common to a lot of cooking advice books. One small problem is that this format is not the best approach to presenting `science' in that science is a body of theories and explained phenomena the understanding of which facilitates applying knowledge to understanding new situations. So, if a book just answers questions, the ability to extend the answers to new situations may not be as good as other expository approaches. That said, I have to say that like Robert L. Wolke's `What Einstein told His Chef', this book may be more accessible to many readers than other conventional writers on the subject such as Harold McGee's works and `The Science of Cooking' by Bristol University (UK) don Peter Barham.

One thing a widely read foodie may want to consider is that they may have already seen most of the material in this book in the volumes cited above. This is not to say this book does not contain some new material, but a devoted reader of Shirley Corriher and Alton Brown may find this new material a bit sparse.

For the reader with little experience with food science reading, I caution you that there are some statements in this book, which are scientifically incorrect. This may be a small point, since the errors are not likely to interfere with your practical cooking, but they may interfere with your ability to extend your knowledge to new situations, which is the whole point of the scientific inquiry in the first place. The first error I noticed is the statement that when a water / alcohol mixture is boiled, the alcohol will all boil off, leaving just water. One of the first things a freshman chemistry student learns is that this is not true. It is true that more alcohol will evaporate than water, until the alcohol and water attain equilibrium. Admittedly, the alcohol will be reduced to a very small level, but it is still there. This is important if someone has physical or religious problems with any alcohol. The second error I noticed is the use of the term `dissolved' when referring to the mixing of flour with water. The proper term here is `suspension', not `solution'. In some ways, this is a more serious error, as suspensions behave much differently than solutions, and the two states are pervasive in cooking techniques, so it is important to know the differences in behavior between the two states.

After all that nit picking, I can still recommend this as a really worthwhile source of information whereby one can improve your cooking, especially for the reasonable paperback price. One especially valuable feature of this book is the excellent bibliography which gives references for all the authors and works mentioned above except for Alton Brown, and a whole lot more.

If you really need to have fun with your reading about food science, I recommend `The Cook Book Decoder or Culinary Alchemy Explained' by retired Canadian professor of Chemistry, Arthur E. Grosser. This book has the added virtue of being great to pass food knowledge on to kids.

The claim to `science' in this book's title is a bit tarnished, but if you are new to foodie science, this book will give you lots of useful information and tell you how to avoid a lot of kitchen pitfalls.