Sunday, June 28, 2009

Book #35: What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained

Title: What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained
Author: Robert L. Wolke

Strictly speaking, What Einstein Told His Cook is more of a reference book than anything else. Wolke divides the book into sections like "Sweet Talk" (all about sugar) and "Salt of the Earth" and goes on to answer common questions about the topic at large. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I'm all about a good food book. And this is one, so even though I probably should have used it as a reference, I read it like a novel, from cover to cover. It was entertaining, and I learned a lot about why foods act the way they do. I've recommended it to a bunch of my friends with science backgrounds, and I haven't heard back to see if they enjoyed the book (or managed to read it yet), but I've wondered since if it might be a better book for a non-science layperson like me for whom all of the information is new (an acid and a base counteract each other when mixed? who knew!) than for someone who already knows all that stuff. This book was published about a decade ago (I think) and Wolke has gone on to write another book in the same series (which I currently have on reserve at the library) and a couple of other "What Einstein Told..." books that are about science but not about cooking.

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