Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

A kitchen is no different from most science laboratories and cookery may properly be regarded as an experimental science. Food preparation and cookery involve many processes which are well described by the physical sciences. Understanding the chemistry and physics of cooking should lead to improvements in performance in the kitchen. For those of us who wish to know why certain recipes work and perhaps more importantly why others fail, appreciating the underlying physical processes will inevitably help in unravelling the mysteries of the "art" of good cooking.

Strong praise from the reviewers -

"Will be stimulating for amateur cooks with an interest in following recipes and understanding how they work. They will find anecdotes and, sprinkled throughout the book, scientific points of information... The book is a pleasant read and is an invitation to become better acquainted with the science of cooking." - NATURE

"This year, at last, we have a book which shows how a practical understanding of physics and chemistry can improve culinary performance… [Barham] first explains, in a lucid non-textbooky way, the principles behind taste, flavour and the main methods of food preparation, and then gives fool-proof basic recipes for dishes from roast leg of lab to chocolate soufflé." - FINANCIAL TIMES WEEKEND

"This book is full of interesting and relevant facts that clarify the techniques of cooking that lead to the texture, taste and aroma of good cuisine. As a physicist the author introduces the importance of models in preparing food, and their modification as a result of testing (tasting)."- THE PHYSICIST

"Focuses quite specifically on the physics and food chemistry of practical domestic cooking in terms of real recipes... Each chapter starts with an overview of the scientific issues relevant to that food group, e.g. toughness of meat, thickening of sauces, collapse of sponge cakes and soufflés. This is followed by actual recipes, with the purpose behind each ingredient and technique explained, and each recipe followed by a table describing some common problems, causes and solutions. Each chapter then ends with suggested experiments to illustrate some of the scientific principles exploited in the chapter." - FOOD & DRINK NEWSLETTER

Average Customer Rating:

Good Food Book	Customer Rating:
Good book, easy read and to follow. A good way to learn about the chemistry and the science of foods.

The Science of Cooking

Customer Rating:

A review for science teachers: Peter Barnam's The Science of Cooking (Springer, 2000) is a classic, much quoted in New Scientist and The Science of Christmas. After a general introduction at about a year 9 chemistry level it quickly moves on to Maillard reactions (which develop the flavours in cooked meat), the formation of insoluble gluten (from the proteins gliadin and glutenin) when flour is hydrated and kneaded, and the role of fats and oils in carrying aromatics (or emulsifying finely ground cocoa to make chocolate). Most of all I enjoyed this book for the experiments it suggested (adaptable to inquiry learning). For example: How could you prove fructose is sweeter than glucose? Easy: Use a control, such as an artificial sweetener. But not all people will give the same interpretation when faced with the sugars. How can we show that they are detecting the control in a consistent way? And so on...Secondly, the text is punctuated with anecdotes about demonstration lectures on the Physics of the Black Forest Gateau or Soufflé Chemistry ...you can almost hear this born teacher, winner of the Institute of Physics Prize for Promoting the Public Awareness of Physics, script a unique lesson for your students. This little recipe book promises a few mouthwatering improvements to my own kitchen alchemy, and comes highly recommended.

scientifically informative but far from complete in the cooking aspect

Customer Rating:

Pros: Scientifically informative and solid. Knowing the chemical and physical facts behind cooking methods applied to certain group of food would definitely help one to produce constantly good cooking result. And the text is very well written, _no_ part of this book is boring to read. Cons: This book is focused on western cooking methods, many highly interesting cooking methods which are very popular, even dominating in East Asia are not even mentioned in this book. For example, there is a chapter for sauces but soup was hardly mentioned in this book, as if soup is not a kind of dishes. However the art/science of soup cooking is very important for many people. I, for one, really looked for information for soup cooking in this book but was disappointed. And, the author seems think any sauce has to be at least a bit thick (containing reasonable amount of starch). But this is not true in Asia countries. We have many kinds of really tasty sauces which are totally fluid, almost as light as water. These light sauces are not only tasty but also have really nice aroma, nice colours, contains very little energy and they attach onto the main food very well. In the fish chapter, he said salted/dried fishes are very difficult to regain the good texture and taste, and wrote up 2 pages about a Norwegian disaster of fish making. But in east China, people steam salted sea eels and the result is so, so delicious. He should really have tried it out himself. In this book, the science of vegetable cooking is not mentioned. Nevertheless I think vegetable cooking is very important and I really want to learn the science of vegetable cooking from the author, I like his writing so much! And, in this book all doughs are baked but there are many people (mostly from East Asia) who steam doughs and the results are excellent too. For beef steak cooking, many professional cooks saute/shallow fry every side of a 2-3cm thick steak first (every side one minute) and then put it into pre-heated oven for 5-7 minutes. This cooking method is not mentioned in this book and actually I did want to know the advantage of the post-fry oven handling of a beef steak. I really hope there will be a second edition of this book. I seriously suggest the author travel to Hong Kong and try out reasonably many different kinds of food in non-western restaurants in Hong Kong. Especially the famous soups, all kinds of vegetable dishes and all kinds of steamed dough-based snacks....

behind the kitchen

Customer Rating:

This book will teach you the chemical secrets of the techniques that usually are used in gastronomy, from the basic concepts to most complex. Knowing the scientific basis of the culinary processes, Peter Barham describes kitchen recipes in detail, of this way, will not fail any more. This book also has some very interesting experiments to do at home, and that will offer help to understand of more practical way, the physical-chemistries concepts that try to explain. If you are interested in cooking, and science doesn't bore to you, read this book!

http://www.bragazzis.com	Customer Rating:
A little to heavy on the science for my liking!...but there are some useful theories for beginners! Ian http://www.bragazzis.com