Modernist Cuisine - The Art and Science of Cooking (Volume 1-6, OCR’d PDF)

Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, Maxime Bilet - Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

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A revolution is underway in the art of cooking. Just as French Impressionists upended centuries of tradition, Modernist cuisine has in recent years blown through the boundaries of the culinary arts. Borrowing techniques from the laboratory, pioneering chefs at world-renowned restaurants such as elBulli, The Fat Duck, Alinea, and wd~50 have incorporated a deeper understanding of science and advances in cooking technology into their culinary art.

In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet--scientists, inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own right--have created a six-volume, 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking.

Volume 1: History & Fundamentals

Volume 1 begins with a his­tor­i­cal sur­vey that places the emer­gence of the Modernist cook­ing move­ment in its proper con­text, as just the lat­est in a series of trans­for­ma­tional shifts in the culi­nary arts. The vol­ume con­tin­ues with a prac­ti­cal and author­i­ta­tive walk through the basic biol­ogy of food­borne ill­nesses, how they spread, and how care­ful cooks can exploit the lat­est slow-cooking tech­niques with­out putting them­selves or their guests at risk. Next, a provoca­tive chap­ter on food and health exam­ines many of the most com­mon beliefs about what we should and should not eat to stay healthy—and finds dis­ap­point­ingly few that have sur­vived care­ful scrutiny by the sci­en­tific community.

The vol­ume con­cludes with two chap­ters that every cook should read to under­stand the two most fun­da­men­tal ingre­di­ents of all cook­ing: heat and water. In the kitchen, we use these every day, in every dish. Yet even the most expe­ri­enced cooks find them­selves occa­sion­ally frus­trated or bewil­dered by the unex­pected ways in which heat moves into and through foods, and by the gen­uinely odd chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of water.

Written explic­itly for cooks, these chap­ters present the fun­da­men­tal sci­ence every culi­nary enthu­si­ast should mas­ter. The engag­ing writ­ing and highly illus­trated for­mat bring the sub­jects to life.

Volume 2: Techniques & Equipment

Volume 2 cov­ers the meth­ods and machines of cook­ing, from ancient to avant-garde. The Traditional Cooking chap­ter of nearly 150 pages pro­vides a new view inside the old approaches—from grilling to smok­ing, stir-fry to saute—to reveal what is really going on. This view through the sci­en­tists’ eyes debunks many long-held mis­con­cep­tions about tra­di­tional ways of cook­ing. The authors show, for exam­ple, why:
1.boil­ing often cooks faster than steaming
2.adjustable grills cook just as hot as fixed grills
3.expen­sive pots and pans are not worth it
4.bak­ing is really all about dry­ing the food
5.deep-fried food tastes best when the oil is older
6.tra­di­tional meth­ods require both tremen­dous skill and good luck to achieve per­fect doneness.

The chap­ter on cook­ing in mod­ern ovens offers the first com­plete guide to cook­ing in combi ovens and water­va­por ovens for both pro­fes­sion­als and home cooks. (It also includes sev­eral fun and only slightly dan­ger­ous tricks you can per­form with a microwave.)

Next come two com­pre­hen­sive chap­ters on new approaches that give cooks far greater con­trol over two cru­cial variables—heat and humidity—that sep­a­rate suc­cess from fail­ure in cook­ing. In Cooking Sous Vide, the authors present the first ency­clo­pe­dic guide to this increas­ingly pop­u­lar tech­nique in which food is vac­u­umpacked in bags then cooked in a water bath or a water­va­por oven. More than 80 pages are devoted to dis­cussing the ben­e­fits of this highly flex­i­ble way to cook as well as its spe­cial safety con­sid­er­a­tions. Everything the advanced cook needs to know to get started cook­ing with water baths is included.

Chapter 10, The Modernist Kitchen, presents nearly 200 pages of highly illus­trated expla­na­tions of spe­cial­ized equip­ment that has moved from sci­en­tific lab­o­ra­to­ries to pro­fes­sional kitchens. Centrifuges, freeze dry­ers, rotary evap­o­ra­tors, homog­e­niz­ers, vac­uum fil­ters, and many oth­ers are cov­ered, all based on the first-hand expe­ri­ence of the authors and their team of research cooks in using such equip­ment to develop inno­v­a­tive dishes at the The Cooking Lab. Through exam­ple recipes and illus­trated step-by-step tech­niques, the chap­ter opens the door to a whole new world of culi­nary pos­si­bil­i­ties, a world until now inhab­ited by just a hand­ful of top chefs around the world.

Volume 3: Animals & Plants

Before it is meat, it is mus­cle. In the liv­ing ani­mal, mus­cles con­vert chem­i­cal energy into mechan­i­cal activ­i­ties such as run­ning, swim­ming, or fly­ing. In the kitchen, these activ­i­ties have come to an end, but their influ­ence lives on in sur­pris­ing ways. The chef’s pri­mary goal when serv­ing a meat or seafood dish is to max­i­mize juici­ness, ten­der­ness, and fla­vor. But what is juici­ness and what are the fac­tors that deter­mine it? What exactly is meant by fla­vor and where does it come from? As we will see, there are many com­mon mis­con­cep­tions based on an incom­plete under­stand­ing of the unique bio­chem­i­cal and mol­e­c­u­lar nature of meat that can lead cooks astray, or at least pre­vent them from mak­ing the most of a cut or fillet.

Chapter 11 on Meat and Seafood ded­i­cates more than 250 pages to explain­ing the fun­da­men­tal nature of mus­cle and other edi­ble ani­mal parts, how they are trans­formed into food, and what hap­pens as they are cooked, cured, marinated, or smoked. Dozens of para­met­ric recipes, exam­ple recipes, and step-by-step “how-to” fea­tures guide cooks through the best strate­gies for cook­ing and help them avoid com­mon mis­takes and improve their tech­nique, thus empow­er­ing them fur­ther to exper­i­ment and innovate.

Chapter 12 on Plant Foods is ded­i­cated to poor, defense­less plants. Without hides or bones for for­ti­fi­ca­tion and anchored in the soil, it seems they’re no match for those of us who would make their ten­der shoots into a light lunch. But because they’re so vul­ner­a­ble, plants have evolved elab­o­rate phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal block­ades to dis­suade us and other fauna from serv­ing our­selves. They say it was a brave man who tried the first oys­ter, but who do you sup­pose first had the notion to try an arti­choke? Or cyanide-laced cas­sava root? The very cells of most plants—bolstered by stiff, indi­gestible fiber, or pro­tec­tive toxins—put up a fight.

Fruits are the excep­tion. There’s a rea­son they’re sweet and ready to eat: they evolved so that ani­mals will eat them, then dis­perse their undi­gested seeds. But usu­ally peo­ple alter the foods that we clas­sify as veg­eta­bles, starches, and grains before they serve them, whether by steam­ing or boil­ing them, salt­ing or pick­ling, fry­ing or microwaving—or even giv­ing them a quick plunge in liq­uid nitrogen. All these meth­ods of prepar­ing and pre­serv­ing pro­duce and grains are cov­ered in this vol­ume, which includes instruc­tions for:
1.cook­ing pro­duce and meats sous vide
2.form­ing sausages and other forcemeats
3.mak­ing risot­tos and pastas
4.mak­ing bat­ters and breadings
5.salt­ing, pick­ling, fer­ment­ing, dehy­drat­ing, smok­ing and freeze-drying produce
6.brin­ing and cur­ing meats and seafoods
7.mak­ing puffed snacks, crispy skins, and fruit and veg­etable chips

Volume 4: Ingredients & Preparations

Modern cooks use ingre­di­ents in ways ear­lier gen­er­a­tions would never have imag­ined, and new ingre­di­ents such as gelling and thick­en­ing agents, emul­si­fiers, and foams have found their way into every cor­ner of Modernist cui­sine. In its 400 pages, Volume 4 goes beyond tra­di­tional ingre­di­ents to explain thick­en­ers, gels, emul­sions, and foams—the real keys to both tra­di­tional and Modernist cook­ing at the high­est level.

Hundreds of para­met­ric recipes and exam­ple recipes—many adapted from the world’s most famous and inno­v­a­tive chefs—illuminate the best options for mak­ing clas­sic dishes, such as stocks and sauces, in mod­ern ways and for prepar­ing Modernist cre­ations that go well beyond what clas­si­cal tech­niques can pro­duce. Noodles made of gel, feather-light foams, mus­sles in trans­par­ent spheres of their own brine, egg­less may­on­naise ... the chap­ters in this vol­ume unlock doors and point the way to end­less possibilities.

In keep­ing with the highly illus­trated approach the authors have taken else­where in the book, each tricky step is not just described but also shown, through thou­sands of pho­tographs. Step by step, photo by photo, read­ers who learned in vol­ume 3 how to make the per­fect ham­burger patty (it’s all in the grind­ing) now see how to pre­pare per­fect slices of their favorite cheese to top it. Ever want to infuse liq­uid smoke into let­tuce or noo­dles? Or cook an egg to the per­fect cus­tard tex­ture? The instruc­tions are all there. Volume 4 includes para­met­ric for­mu­las, illus­trated step-by-step tech­niques, and exam­ple recipes for:
1.whole, pick­led, and pre­served eggs
2.cus­tards; blended and sep­a­rated egg gels
3.tofus and other pro­tein curds
4.cold gels, coat­ing gels, hot gels, and fluid gels
5.using pre­hy­drated starches and hydro­col­loids to thicken hot and cold liquids;
6.mak­ing milks and creams
7.mak­ing edi­ble films

Volume 5: Plated-Dish Recipes

The recipes you’ll find in this book are quite dif­fer­ent from those you see in most cook­books. The point of Modernist Cuisine is that we’re look­ing at cook­ing from new angles, with a dis­tinct inter­est in sub­jects not com­monly cov­ered in culi­nary books. So it stands to rea­son that our recipes look some­what dif­fer­ent from those in other cook­books. The goal here is to break down recipes in such a way that you bet­ter under­stand not just the what (ingre­di­ents) and the how (meth­ods), but also the why. To accom­plish this, we needed a new for­mat for pre­sent­ing recipes.

Think of this as a text­book, with recipes used in the way that other text­books might use exam­ple prob­lems or case stud­ies. The com­pact, mod­u­lar form in which we present our recipes makes them a broader resource for instruc­tion and inspi­ra­tion. They’re meant to help you both under­stand the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of culi­nary prin­ci­ples and visu­al­ize how you might apply those prin­ci­ples in other contexts.

In these four vol­umes, you’ll find a huge vari­ety of recipes and foods. Although we are telling the story of Modernist cui­sine, our recipes are not lim­ited to cutting-edge dishes. Instead, we cover every­thing from American regional bar­be­cue to inno­v­a­tive fla­vored gels. The point is not to tout mod­ern approaches or sci­ence for its own sake but to illus­trate how the prin­ci­ples of Modernist cook­ing can, and should, be applied across a wide range of recipes.

Volume 6: Kitchen Manual

Cooking instructions with sample recipes and extensive reference tables.
► + Corrections and Clarifications (Modernist_Cuisine_corrections.pdf)

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