Modernist Cuisine Book Buy PATCHED
Modernist Bread places the latest scientific research and state-of-the-art applications into the hands of anyone searching for answers about bread making. Spanning over 2,600 pages, it is the largest, most comprehensive book ever written about bread.
modernist cuisine book buy
The book that started a revolution. At 2,438 pages, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking broke the rules for what a cookbook can be; it quickly became an instant classic and a trusted resource for top chefs around the world.
The Photography of Modernist Cuisine is a feast for the eyes. This massive and stunning art book features 312 pages of incredible photographs from Nathan Myhrvold and his photography team as well as the techniques and stories behind the images.
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet, is a $625 cookbook (actually it's $421.87 on Amazon, with free shipping!). That is very, very expensive, and some folks are understandably shocked by the price. That's okay, though, because the five volume, 2,200-page guide to molecular gastronomy is not really intended for them. Like not at all.
But still. Why is it so expensive? Other chefs in this field have produced cookbooks for far less money: The menu catalogs for Ferran Adrià's El Bulli cost between $200-$300 for example, and Heston Blumenthal's epically huge The Big Fat Duck Cookbook runs around $250. So what are you getting in Modernist Cuisine that's worth an extra three, four hundred dollars?
The research and execution of the book was organized by Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer for Microsoft and the founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, a firm which invests in inventors. Myhrvold along with Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, both former chefs in Blumenthal's research kitchen for the famed restaurant The Fat Duck, hired a staff of 20 people to initially research the sous vide cooking technique, and instead ended up with a massive multi-volume text that also covers "microbiology, food safety, the physics of heat transfer on the stove and in the oven, formulas for turning fruit and vegetable juices into gels, and more." The creation of what they call The Cooking Lab as well as the development of promised new photographic techniques adds to the cost. Also because of its lack of mass appeal, Myhrvold and company are self-publishing in vastly smaller numbers than even, say, Thomas Keller's $47 professional sous vide cookbook Under Pressure.
So who will buy it? Certainly professionals, culinary schools, and perhaps even more progressive traditional university chemistry departments. That's not to say non-professionals won't buy it: there are plenty of food-obsessed folks with money to burn who would love nothing more than to have Modernist Cooking on their bookshelves, pristine and untouched. Is that silly? Sure. Is it hurting anyone? Not really.
A commenter on the Gawker piece cited above said, "I'd rather spend the $600 on good products, or, better even, a good restaurant." Which is great! And this book could be the key to the dishes one might consume at such an expensive meal. The research and the techniques and the knowledge have the potential for a lasting impact; David Chang has called it "the cookbook to end all cookbooks" and Ferran Adrià said "This book will change the way we understand the kitchen." That sounds like it might be worth $625.
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a 2011 cookbook by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. The book is an encyclopedia and a guide to the science of contemporary cooking.[1]
The book was not published by a traditional publishing house. With no publishers thinking that the book would be profitable, Myhrvold and the culinary research and development lab known as The Cooking Lab published the book themselves.[2] Its six volumes cover history and fundamentals, techniques and equipment, animals and plants, ingredients and preparation, plated dish recipes and a kitchen manual containing brief information on useful topics.[3] At the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2010 the book was named "the most important cookbook of the first ten years of the 21st century" and was introduced into the group's hall of fame.[4] Containing 2,438 pages and weighing in at 23.7 kilograms (52 lb),[5] the work has been described as the "cookbook to end all cookbooks."[6]
The idea for the book came up when Myhrvold acquired a temperature-controlled water bath for sous vide cooking in 2003. He tried to find information about this new cooking technique, which had been invented in the 1960s[10] and was in use at many restaurants by 2003. He could find only a few articles and one book (in Spanish) on sous vide, however. He posted messages on eGullet, a high-end cooking forum, asking for recipes or sources, but found that the process was poorly understood.[3]
Myhrvold has attended Ecole de Cuisine la Varenne, a cooking school in Burgundy, France[11] and has also cooked part-time at Rover's, a French restaurant in Seattle owned by Thierry Rautureau. He is also a scientist, having earned advanced degrees in geophysics, space physics, and theoretical and mathematical physics, done post-doctoral research with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University, and worked for many years as the chief technology officer and chief strategist of Microsoft.[12][self-published source] Drawing on his food and science skills, Myhrvold performed experiments and calculations to generate tables of times and temperatures for cooking various foods sous vide. When he posted these tables to eGullet, answering the question that he himself had asked in that forum about one year earlier, someone suggested that he should write a book. In 2006 he began to do so, but soon realized that he could not write the book he wanted himself, and that it would require a team using proper equipment.[3]
Myhrvold and Wayt Gibbs, an executive editor at Intellectual Ventures who served as the editor-in-chief and project manager for the book, also hired writers and editors, research assistants, photo editors, and an art director. First hired was Chris Young, who had just stopped his work of leading the development kitchen in Heston Blumenthal's restaurant The Fat Duck in England. Young recruited Maxime Bilet, also from The Fat Duck, who led the team of research chefs that developed and tested the 1,522 recipes in the book.[3] Photographer Ryan Matthew Smith joined the team after answering an advert on Craigslist seeking a photo editor.[15] The book team ultimately grew to include more than 50 staff and freelance contributors plus 14 outside experts who reviewed various chapters of the book.[16] At the high point of the project, 36 researchers, chefs, and editors were working simultaneously on the book.[6]
Initially the book was planned to be 150 pages on cooking sous vide in water baths and combi ovens, along with some scientific fundamentals relevant to those techniques.[11] It gradually grew in scope, and by late 2009 the book plan had expanded to 1,500 pages,[11] before finally being printed at 2,438 pages.[14] The book cost more than US$1,000,000 to produce the first printing of 6,000 copies, which sold out shortly after the publication date in March 2011.[14] In April 2011, The Cooking Lab ordered a second printing of 25,000 copies.[17]
The critical reception was generally positive, citing detail on molecular gastronomic techniques and strong illustrations. However, the book was criticized by reviewers in the New York Times and the New Yorker for being dryly written and of limited utility to cooks without an expensive array of kitchen tools at their disposal.[20][21] Two years after it was first published, a reviewer in Forbes magazine pronounced Modernist Cuisine and its two successor books "this decade's most influential work about food" and also likely the most profitable set of books in the genre in recent years.[22]
In 2010 the book was inducted into the Gourmand Cookbook Hall of Fame.[23] In 2012 the book won the James Beard Foundation's "Cookbook of the Year" and "Cooking from a Professional Point of View" awards,[24] and the International Association of Culinary Professionals' "Professional Kitchens", "Design" and "Visionary Achievement" awards.
Over the past two years we have been reviewing all types of cookbooks, but as many of you already mentioned there is a collection of books that we are missing. To fix this issue and as a way to celebrate our 2nd anniversary, we team up with the fantastic The Cooking Lab Team to bring you the Modernist Cuisine Review.
A true work of art, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, is undoubtedly the Rolls-Royce of cookbooks. These six volumes masterpiece put it together by The Cooking Lab Team led by Nathan Myhrvold, the multimillionaire tech visionary, is an encyclopedia of cooking, a journey through the world of food in a way thats accessible to both professional chefs and home cooks. 041b061a72