The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking - Culinary Reactions

I like science, and love cooking. So Culinary Reactions : The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking by Simon Quellen Field is very exciting to me. The idea is to explain in clear and easy language how the chemicals in our foods react and behave to create what we eat.

From the liquid nitrogen frozen ice cream in the introduction, to the very end where he explains why salt and ice freeze ice cream and all the information in between, he's managed it very well.

The chapters each cover a specific topic, and there is some overlap in the examples used. Like making cheese involves making a protein gel using protein chemistry and can be flavored using molds which are covered in the biology chapter.

The language is clear and scientific. He explains the way molecules interact to create foams such as bread and meringues, how beer and vinegar are made, how specific cultured bacteria can create inhospitable environments for more dangerous bacteria. The affects of acids and bases on recipes, including a very clear explanation of the difference between the two.

Yes, it's science, but it's easy to read and understand.

There are few cooking projects that show the chemical processes at work. A whipped topping that's stabilized with the addition of xanthan gum, a homemade cheese cheese with instructions for two great, inexpensive and easy to build cheese presses, a turkey that's is surface sterilized to be cooked for a very long time at below boiling point temperatures to keep it super juicy, extracting DNA from pumpkins and fruit, and lemonade with color changing grape juice "chameleon eggs".

If you have a practical knowledge of cooking, you will probably get inspired to try other things like creating invert sugar solutions to use instead of simple syrup, or trying acids like lemon juice in your meringues instead of cream of tartar.

The understanding of the scientific principles behind why ingredients behave the way they do can help make anyone a better cook I believe. I found the information exciting and inspiring, and know I'll use it to develop more recipes for my family.

It's educational and interesting. The projects provide great science experiments to do with your children or just on your own. It's one that my husband is interested in reading as well. He's already said he will build me a cheese press following the instructions in the book so I can try making harder cheeses. I really enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone who has an interest in science and cooking.

[I was provided with a complimentary copy of the book to review on my craft blog- Don't Eat the Paste]

Simon Field has authored 8 books on science and technology and created the website scitoys.com. A picture on page xv shows the author making ice cream with a 160 liter canister of liquid nitrogen pretty much sums up the book. The author likes to have fun with science and here it applies it to food. He covers the chemistry of foams, emulsions, colloids, oils and fats, solutions, crystallization and proteins. He ties concepts such as ionic and covalent bonds into cooking and makes them interesting and easy to grasp. He provides several recipes throughout to illustrate the ideas he presents. It is a fun, interesting and well written book.

Some facets of this book were amazing: great information, fun experiments, and an engaging tone. The author's fun, enthusiastic tone is often reminiscent of the Mythbusters. The explanations of why things work (like beating cream leading to both whipped cream and butter, two drastically different results made from the same ingredients by the same method) were fascinating. This would be great to use with kids.

After reading this book I feel much more prepared to design my own recipes, gauge the results of a printed recipe based on its ingredients and their ratios, and adjust recipes to achieve desired results.

There were, however, some strange aspects to this book as well. Some portions completely lost the Mythbusters-style energy and got entangled in chemical structures that weren't really meaningful to me. Granted, I'm not good at chemistry, but the shift was odd and disappointing. Though the information on why things happen was accurate, this is NOT somewhere to look for nutritional wisdom - the author clearly abides by FDA company line, allowing that MSG and corn syrup are fine and raw milk is evil regardless of clear evidence to the contrary. Finally, the ending of the book is startlingly abrupt. The final chapter finishes like any other and then there just isn't anything else. No conclusion, no wrap up, no acknowledgement that you're on the last page. Very odd.

All things considered, this is worth picking up and checking out.

I must admit, I was curious about this book. During the holidays especially, I've found myself trying to cook in larger quantities or even par down some recipes and I've been at a loss as to how to do it without disasterous results. So, I have to say that I did gain some insight into how to resolve these problems as well as understanding why certain techniques work better than others. What I didn't realize though is that I've been away from chemistry class for a very long time and well, this book became a challenge to comprehend regardless of the author's pleasant prose and clear instructions---it actually was more than I wanted or needed to know overall. I do agree with the author, food can be fun, chemistry of food for me, not so much. I'll leave that to the culinary students and chefs who really need it.

This is more of a chemistry book than a cookbook. It explains why certain things happen when you cook in an immense amount of detail. There was some really interesting content however I found that it was too scientific for my enjoyment; I was not however a big fan of chemistry when I was at school.

A good starter book for those interested in the chemical reactions of food. Decent information, though a working knowledge of basic chemistry will likely help a reader understand the concepts, though Field does manage to provide adequate explanations for many of the principles.

I purchased this for my brother the medical Dr., but I ended up giving it to our daughter the biologist. She loved it, and my son the Dr.. in electrical engineering saw it and wanted a copy. Now I will have to buy at least 2 more copies and probably one for me. Very interesting text.

I bought this book, as a chemistry major, intrigued by what I could learn. It does talk about chemistry, but not as in depth as I'd hoped, and in mainly layman's terms. Great for anyone who has a high school level of chemistry; I'll be keeping this book to use in my classroom someday.