On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen ( PDFDrive ) 16

Now a few words about the scientific approach to food and cooking and the organization of this book Like everything on earth, foods are mixtures of different chemicals, and the qualities that we aim to influence in the kitchen — taste, aroma, texture, color, nutritiousness — are all manifestations of chemical properties Nearly two hundred years ago, the eminent gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin lectured his cook on this point, tongue partly in cheek, in The Physiology of Taste: You are a little opinionated, and I have had some trouble in making you understand that the phenomena which take place in your laboratory are nothing other than the execution of the eternal laws of nature, and that certain things which you do without thinking, and only because you have seen others do them, derive nonetheless from the highest scientific principles 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 To understand what’s happening within a food as we cook it, we need to be familiar with the world of invisibly small molecules and their reactions with each other That idea may seem daunting There are a hundred-plus chemical elements, many more combinations of those elements into molecules, and several .. .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... 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... 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