Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking"

My copy is the 2004, ISBN 0684800012. I wanted to comment on this excellent and much-needed single-volume reference book on the science and background of common foods. That's its main impact, it gathers in one place information from far-ranging sources. Some of its content was readily available already, but other parts are from technical sources seldom used by food writers. (Incidentally I haven't met McGee but he is local to my area and we have hung out at some of the same places.)

McGee's 1984 original was part, and maybe the most encyclopedic, of a 1980s US trend to books explaining or demystifying cooking principles. Others focused on flavors and aromas and tricks with them, such as Michael Roberts's Secret Ingredients (ISBN 0553053205).

I don't claim to know McGee's book well, as I've only had the 2004 and looked up various topics as needed. One thing that stands out is that it's a tertiary source -- gathering information from earlier (acknowledged) sources, themselves often reference books widely available. I'm not likely the only reader with a good number of food-related books who often feels déjà-vu when reading McGee. Likewise, with topics I previously researched in depth, I sometimes find errors and even howlers (which I ought to collect and forward to him).

An almost trifling example caught my eye when I looked up coffee. It's only marginally worth mentioning, it's not an error but a missed opportunity to put information in context and maybe fix a misconception. Describing cooking sage, McGee mentions its richness in camphor and thujone (which contribute to its distinct aroma) then repeats a conventional advice that thujone can be toxic, and goes on from this to discourage eating sage often. What he does not add is that anything can be toxic (even, we now know, water), the word has little meaning without dose information. Thujone's animal lethal dose (LD) level at a given body weight is the same as caffeine's, which McGee does not single out as toxic nor take as grounds for discouraging frequent coffee. Nor does he mention that the USFDA's official food-ingredient data base lists sage in the highest safety category, without limitation or restriction. Again, it's a small point. (This particular natural chemical picked up more stigma from the 19th-century notoriety of absinthe liquors -- whose harmful effects were mostly from other causes -- than it picked up of the clarifying science that emerged after absinthe was banned.)

Another example, wine-related, was from McGee's NYT food column a few months ago, rather than the book. [Edit: My original description here of the column, from memory, was badly garbled. Accurate story and arguments are in follow-up below.] This in turn led me to ponder a little about how sure of his ground McGee is on other scientific points he mentions.

Thanks for mentioning this review, Max. I'll study it a bit, and revert.

Regards, Bob

I personally think it's a great book. Read it cover to cover years ago when I got my first copy. And from what I can tell, he's pretty accurate on his science.

This book is a must-have. I use it all the time for any number of reasons.

rwj

[Robin Garr]

It's an excellent book. Here's a review I published in November 2004. (Prices updated.)

<table border="0" align="right" width="155"><tr><td><img src="http://www.wineloverspage.com/graphics1/mcgee.jpg" border="0" align="right"></td></tr></table>If you like FoodTV's wacky Alton Brown but sometimes wish that he would get <i>really</i> serious about food science, you're going to love Harold McGee.

With none of Brown's goofiness but with substantially more intense scholarship, McGee's <i>On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen</i> has become a cult classic for "foodies" who can't get enough information about what really goes on in the oven - and in our stomachs - when we cook and eat. A massive volume - its 894 pages in hardcover tip my kitchen scale at 3 pounds, 1 1/4 ounces - its 15 densely packed chapters cover foods from milk and dairy products and eggs to sauces, sugars, chocolate and confectionery, not to mention "The Four Basic Food Molecules." (All right, they're water, fats, carbohydrates and proteins.)

While much of this may be of more interest to "foodies" than "winoes," the 67-page Chapter 13 ("Wines, Beers and Spirits") is worth the price of admission alone for those who are more interested in grapes, grain and malt than salads, meats, cakes and cookies. This chapter covers an amazing variety of drinks-related science, from the physiology of hangovers to the ancient Sumerian hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess who presided over early beer brewing. One table, more comprehensive than anything of its like I've seen, lists the specific chemical molecules associated with more than 30 different aromas in wine. If it intrigues you to know that the "kerosene" scent in some Rieslings actually comes from trimethyldihydronaphthalene, then this book is definitely for you. And if not ... maybe it's not.

Here's the info and buy-it link at Amazon.com for <I>On Food and Cooking</I>:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... rswineloA/
(List price $40, Amazon.com sale price $26.40, a 34 percent discount. If you should use this link to buy the book, we'll earn a small commission to help pay the rent at WineLoversPage.com.)

Ditto. It's a must-have if you're serious about food. One of my most-used references.

I might say, "I'm with Stupid." We really aren't that different.

rwj

Muffin Stud

Why am I thinking about Frank Gorshin in the black and white makeup?

First a general comment, then correcting an earlier criticism I posted.

1. I like the book, bought it, use it, and recommend it to anyone. My criticisms here are limited and specific -- in the nature of making a good thing better. A risk in a book treating the science of food is that to pop culture, scientific lingo has gee-whiz value, whether or not the lingo has depth behind it. That's why I've looked closely at areas in the book I know something about, and sought cues to the author's approach to his content. Also I've been sensitized in the last year by cases of authoritative-looking misinformation in mainstream US print media. Some examples:

-- Syndicated column by an emeritus chemistry professor on broilers, with basic physics errors invalidating his advice.

-- Syndicated column on roux in cooking, dismissing suggestion that flour be toasted separately and added to fat. Author apparently unaware either that this method is locally called "roux" in parts of US or that most industrial roux and roux-related sauces are made exactly this way (via plant dextrin).

-- Wine article in a major daily, with misinformation about a wine adulterant. When I wrote in citing the easily checked data, an editor, rather than checking it, cited a consultant's advice. Had he checked for himself he would have known his consultant was wrong.

-- Magazine article on reemergence of absinthe that sustained badly obsolete myths even while talking about clarification of the subject. Which leads conveniently to my next item:

2. Proof, if ever you needed more, of the risk of relying on memory for details came when I checked McGee's column of 3 Jan 07, Here, which I cited above.

My complaint wasn't with the bubbles story, which describes Liger-Belair's 2004 book. Though McGee can be read there to say that dust causing Champagne bubbles is a new revelation. (Not to anyone who has used a dusty Champagne glass, or seen bubble nucleation by any kind of particles -- powders added to sparkling water, salt into a near-boiling pot, etc. It's a classic phenomenon.)

My main quibble was with the earlier part of the article, on absinthe. McGee well summarizes 19th-century popularity of that liquor, its popular association with mental and physical problems and criminality, medicine blaming these problems initially on the herbal principle thujone. "This belief helped get absinthe banned." So far so good. But then, "according to the new study ... absinthism was either simple alcohol poisoning ... or caused by methanol and other toxic adulterants found in some cheap absinthes." Nothing wrong with the conclusions, just that they're in no way new. I've read about absinthe for maybe 30 years and encountered these points steadily. I could show McGee authoritative US books from 20 and 40 years ago saying the same things. What was the main online source on absinthe for years (before the recent hobby interest) said the same things. So I am really arguing about putting this information into context, or getting the history right.