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McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture

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Brown, Alton, TIME Magazine (April 30, 2009). "The 2008 TIME 100". Time. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008. {{ cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) First a few words about the remaining components. Milk is slightly acidic, with a pH between 6.5 and 6.7, and both acidity and salt concentrations strongly affect the behavior of the proteins, as we'll see. The fat globules carry colorless vitamin A and its yellow-orange precursors the carotenes, which are found in green feed and give milk and undyed butter whatever color they have. Breeds differ in the amount of carotene they convert into vitamin A; Guernsey and Jersey cows convert little and give especially golden milk, while at the other extreme sheep, goats, and water buffalo process nearly all of their carotene, so their milk and butter are nutritious but white. Riboflavin, which has a greenish color, can sometimes be seen in skim milk or in the watery translucent whey that drains from the curdled proteins of yogurt. It's a matter of overcoming fear. Anything that's frozen is not going to go bad. It's probably not going to be very pleasant, so the only way to answer that question is to take them out, try 'em. If you can tolerate them, drown them in a sauce and disguise the fact that they're cardboardy in texture, otherwise toss them." Keeping Micelles Separate...One member of the casein family is especially influential in these gatherings. That is kappa-casein, which caps the micelles once they reach acertain size, prevents them from growing larger, and keeps them dispersed and separate. One end of the capping-casein molecule extends from the micelle out into the surrounding liquid, and forms a "hairy layer" with a negative electrical charge that repels other micelles.

The great virtue of the cook's time-tested, thought-less recipes is that they free us from the distraction of having to guess or experiment or analyze as we prepare a meal. On the other hand, the great virtue of thought and analysis is that they free us from the necessity of following recipes, and help us deal with the unexpected, including the inspiration to try something new. Thoughtful cooking means paying attention to what our senses tell us as we prepare it, connecting that information with past experience and with an understanding of what's happening to the food's inner substance, and adjusting the preparation accordingly.

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McGee was born on 3 October 1951 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Louise (Hanney) and Charles Gilbert McGee, raised in Elmhurst, Illinois, and educated at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), initially studying astronomy, [4] [9] but graduating with a B.S. in Literature in 1973. He went on to do a Ph.D. on the romantic poetry of John Keats supervised by Harold Bloom at Yale University, graduating in 1978. [1] [8] Career [ edit ] For its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking . He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment. I know of no chef worth his salt who doesn't keep a copy of Harold McGee's masterwork, On Food and Cooking... it is the Rosetta stone of the culinary world...McGee flipped on the science switch, and suddenly there was light. Whereas Julia Child taught how, McGee explains 'why.'" —Alton Brown, Time Stafford, Matthew, SF Weekly (November 24, 2004). On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

In boiling milk, unfolded lactoglobulin binds not to itself but to the capping-casein on the casein micelles, which remain separate; so denatured lactoglobulin doesn't coagulate. When denatured in acid conditions with relatively little casein around, as in cheese whey, lactoglobulin molecules do bind to each other and coagulate into little clots, which can be made into whey cheeses like true ricotta. Heat-denatured whey proteins are better than their native forms at stabilizing air bubbles in milk foams and ice crystals in ice creams; this is why milks and creams are usually cooked for these preparations (pp. 26, 43). Before becoming a food science writer, McGee was a literature and writing instructor at Yale. McGee has also written for Nature, [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] Health, The New York Times, the World Book Encyclopedia, The Art of Eating, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, and Physics Today [16] and lectured on kitchen chemistry at cooking schools, universities, The Oxford Symposia on Food and Cookery, the Denver Natural History Museum and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. For a brief time he wrote a regular column for the New York Times, The Curious Cook, which examined, and often debunked, conventional kitchen wisdom. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] His latest book is Nose dive: a field guide to the world's smells (2020). [22] Third, all culinary professionals who have anything whatsoever to do with teaching should read this book from cover to cover, twice. There is absolutely nothing more annoying than having a person in the role of teacher make a patently false statement in their area of expertise. The number of times a Food Network culinary celeb misuses the term `dissolve' when they really mean `emulsify' or simply `mix' would fill volumes. It is still a common mistake to say that searing protein seals in juices. There are many good reasons for searing. Preventing the escape of liquid is not one of them. Even Brown himself has made some gaffs in print and on `Good Eats' such as when he described a very corrosive compound as a strong acid rather than a strong base. He confused one end of the pH scale with the other.This is what interests him – not the cooking so much as the intellectual challenge. McGee did his PhD on Keats, but before Yale he was at the California Institute of Technology, and covered the basic sciences. He wanted to be an astronomer, then decided: "I was interested in big ideas rather than sitting and doing the calculations. So I switched to literature." His interest in food science was initiated partly by language; the bathos of highly technical terms applied to everyday things. "It was," he has said, "strangely exhilarating to see such intellectual firepower aimed at the kneading of dough or the grilling of a hamburger." Milk has been especially valued for two nutritional characteristics: its richness in calcium, and both the quantity and quality of its protein. Recent research has raised some fascinating questions about each of these. In the animal world, humans are exceptional for consuming milk of any kind after they have started eating solid food. And people who drink milk after infancy are the exception within the human species. The obstacle is the milk sugar lactose, which can't be absorbed and used by the body as is: it must first be broken down into its component sugars by digestive enzymes in the small intestine. The lactose-digesting enzyme, lactase, reaches its maximum levels in the human intestinal lining shortly after birth, and then slowly declines, with a steady minimum level commencing at between two and five years of age and continuing through adulthood. This explains everything. Literally. I am so grateful to McGee for his tirelessness, his patience, and his commitment to answering the whys of the kitchen." —Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

On Food and Cooking is a unique blend of culinary lore and scientific explanation that examines food -- its history, its make-up, and its behavior when we cook it, cool it, dice it, age it, or otherwise prepare it for eating. Generously spiced with historical and literary anecdote, it covers all the major food categories, from meat and potatoes to sauce béarnaise and champagne. Easy-to-understand scientific explanations throw light on such mysteries as why you can whip cream but not milk what makes white meat white whether searing really seals in flavor how to tell stale eggs from fresh why "fruits" ripen and "vegetables" don't how to save a sauce what hops do and what happens when you knead dough. A chapter on nutrition reveals that Americans have been obsessed with their diet since the 1800s and exposes the fallacies behind food fads past and present. There's a section on additives -- a not-so-new addition to food -- and taste and smell, our two pleasure-giving versions of the oldest sense on earth. With more than 200 illustrations, including extraordinary photographs of food taken through the electron microscope, this book will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food"--Publisher descriptionAccess-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-03-04 23:01:03 Boxid IA1789708 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Col_number COL-609 Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Most readers today have at least a vague idea of proteins and fats, molecules and energy, and a vague idea is enough to follow most of the explanations in the first 13 chapters, which cover common foods and ways of preparing them. Chapters 14 and 15 then describe in some detail the molecules and basic chemical processes involved in all cooking; and the Appendix gives a brief refresher course in the basic vocabulary of science. You can refer to these final sections occasionally, to clarify the meaning of pH or protein coagulation as you're reading about cheese or meat or bread, or else read through them on their own to get a general introduction to the science of cooking. The basic flavor of fresh milk is affected by the animals' feed. Dry hay and silage are relatively poor in fat and protein and produce a less complicated, mildly cheesy aroma, while lush pasturage provides raw material for sweet, raspberry-like notes (derivatives of unsaturated long-chain fatty acids), as well as barnyardy indoles. The first fluid secreted by the mammary gland is colostrum, a creamy, yellow solution of concentrated fat, vitamins, and proteins, especially immunoglobulins and antibodies. After a few days, when the colostrum flow has ceased and the milk is saleable, the calf is put on a diet of reconstituted and soy milks, and the cow is milked two or three times daily to keep the secretory cells working at full capacity. Over the last few decades, however, the idealized portrait of milk has become more shaded. We've learned that the balance of nutrients in cow's milk doesn't meet the needs of human infants, that most adult humans on the planet can't digest the milk sugar called lactose, that the best route to calcium balance may not be massive milk intake. These complications help remind us that milk was designed to be a food for the young and rapidly growing calf, not for the young or mature human.

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