Modernist Cuisine

Synopsis of Modernist Cuisine

Just as French impressionism broke with centuries of artistic tradition, in recent years avant-garde cuisine has crossed the boundaries of the culinary arts. Borrowing laboratory techniques, the chefs of world-renowned culinary sanctuaries such as elBulli, The Fat Duck, Alinea and wd~50 have opened their kitchens to science and technological innovation by incorporating these fields of knowledge into the creative genius of food processing. In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet - scientists, creators and renowned chefs - reveal in these six volumes, totalling 2,438 pages, culinary techniques that are inspired by science and range from the unsuspected to the sublime. The 20 people who make up The Cooking Lab team have achieved amazing new flavours and textures with tools such as bain-marie, homogenisers and centrifuges and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers and enzymes. Modernist Cuisine is a work destined to reinvent the kitchen. How do you make an omelet that is light and tender on the outside but tasty and creamy on the inside? Or fries that are fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside? Imagine being able to wrap a mussel in a gelatin sphere of its own juice, sweet and salty at the same time. Or prepare a fine and homogeneous butter only based on pistachios. Modernist Cuisine explains all these techniques and guides you step by step with illustrations. The science and technology of gastronomy come to life in thousands of original photographs and diagrams. The latest and most impressive photographic techniques allow the reader to get inside the food to see the whole kitchen in action, from the microscopic fibres of a piece of meat to the cross-section of a Weber barbecue. The experience of eating and cooking under a completely new perspective.