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Molecular Gastronomy

Editor: Hervé This
Publisher: Columbia University Press
$29.95 Cloth (377 p.)
ISBN: 9780231133128
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Reviewed by Sarah Buck, Continuations Bibliographer

Molecular Gastronomy is a sophisticated and fascinating tome (a tome because of the density of content and microscopic font) destined to go down in social and academic history. The purpose of this book is, using the scientific method, to debunk claims by cookbooks and cooking methods from the Middle Ages that are still in use today. This is a book about the perception of flavor and the ways gastronomy can be improved with science. Hervé This illustrates his chapters with experiments that are simple enough to be performed at home: my favorite of which is cooking lentils in water with differing levels of acidity.

This book is laden with science while rendering a clear approach to flavor. It is not a cookbook, however. Hervé This may explain what makes a perfectly cooked egg, but he does not provide instructions for you to follow to achieve that perfection. He says a dry fruity wine helps a fondue, but he doesn't list any types of wine as suggestions. Why does he leave this out? My guess is that this book aims to be a classic (and already is, in my opinion), and a Riesling from Australia in 2007 may be very different from year to year and vineyard to vineyard.

My favorite line in the book is from page 45:

"This increase in viscosity is analogous to the heretical practice of thickening a fondue by adding flour or any other ingredient containing starch, such as potatoes."

Hervé This explains that aged cheese is the best cheese for fondues due to the enzymes which have "broken up the casein and the other proteins into small fragments that are more easily dispersed in a water solution." This makes perfect sense because, as This explains, fondue is an emulsion.

Anyone who has enjoyed reading M. F. K. Fisher or even looking at Alton Brown on the Food Network will be delighted and enriched by this book.

Toward the end of the book there is an interesting chapter on "Length in the Mouth." Science has not spent a lot of time looking at how saliva reacts with wine, and it has recently been discovered that wine has a specific amount of caudalie, which is a unit that measures the time that wine remains aromatic in the mouth after having been swallowed. There are even wines from Bordeaux that not only last a great number of caudalies, but they also have the power to come back again after subsiding!

This book is highly recommended for all libraries, especially ones associated with a physical chemistry program.