Book Review -- "On Food and Cooking...The Science and Lore of The Kitchen" by Harold McGee"

This book changed our lives. Seriously. This is a combination history, science and social studies book. Want to know why so many different foods come from milk? Perhaps you'd like to know that the word cocoa came to us through the Maya and Aztec from the word kakawa coined 3000 years ago. Ever had a kid ask "what's the difference between French Vanilla and regular Vanilla ice cream?" and not had an answer at the ready? Do you find yourself watching "Breaking Bad" and wishing you paid more attention in chemistry class? This book fixes all of that and more.

It is organized into 15 chapters:

1: Milk and Dairy
2: Eggs
3: Meat
4: Fish and Shellfish
5: Edible Plants
6: A Survey of Common Vegetables
7: A Survey of Common Fruits
8: Flavorings from Plants: Herbs and Spices, Tea and Coffee
9: Seeds: Grains, Legumes, and Nuts
10: Cereal Doughs and Batters: Bread, Cakes, Pastry, Pasta
11: Sauces
12: Sugars, Chocolate, and Confectionary
13: Wine, Beer, and Distilled Spirits
14: Cooking Methods and Utensil Materials
15: The Four Basic Food Molecules

Each of the chapters is chock full of tables to compare herbs; aromas; shelf-life of staples; etc. There are callouts throughout with interesting little snippets (like comments from cookbooks over 2000 years old; or what to do if you eat too much wasabi). The writing is interesting enough to merit reading it without a specific cooking agenda and I grab it often (though, for some reason, my wife is more troubled by me taking THIS book into the bathroom than others...sorry, family issue).

Here is the big revelation for my family: this book changed the way we approach both cooking and education for our children. We have a third-grader, a kindergartner and a pre-schooler. They love cooking (and have their own aprons and kid-friendly implements). Each of their schools has assigned "food" homework (Mexican appetizers for Cinco de Mayo; Native American foods; etc.) Now, before any cooking occurs, we break out this book and research all of the ingredients and methods we use. For the third-grader, it ties in her math work (the differences between English and Metric systems; weighing food vs. measuring volume), her science work (esters, enzymes) and social studies (the relation of food to culture). When we combine disciplines like this, we find our childrens' retention is much higher (as well as their energy level while "studying"). The school developed a cross-discipline program called "Quest". One of the assignments was "Gross Foods with Fancy Names". The children researched things like how gooey foods get their consistency; where food colorings come from; and how we learned to use different parts of animals for different cooking purposes. For all I know, one of the teachers bought On Food... and got the idea from Harold McGee. Our third-grader was blown away that she knew what rennet was, what it was used for and where it came from when her Quest team explored cheese. This book is almost never on the kitchen book shelf -- it is constantly in use by someone in our family.

Jason Epstein's comment in the Times is the definitive one: "Indispensable".

Share on Facebook