Culinary Reactions

The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking

By: Simon Quellen Field

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful microbes. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses.

In Culinary Reactions, author Simon Quellen Field explores the chemistry behind the recipes you follow every day. How does altering the ratio of flour, sugar, yeast, salt, butter, and water affect how high bread rises? Why is whipped cream made with nitrous oxide rather than the more common carbon dioxide? And why does Hollandaise sauce fall for "clarified" butter? This easy-to-follow primer even includes recipes to demonstrate the concepts being discussed, including Whipped Creamsicle Topping (a foam), Cherry Dream Cheese (a protein gel), and Lemonade with Chameleon Eggs (an acid indicator). It even shows you how to extract DNA from a Halloween pumpkin. You'll never look at your graduated cylinders, Bunsen burners, and beakers the same way again.

©2012 Simon Quellen Field (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

“With information advanced enough to interest the well-seasoned, hard-boiled home cook, the information in this book is written in such a friendly and approachable manner that even beginner kitchen-chemists will be delighted to learn from it." ( San Francisco Book Review)

BEST AUDIO

For as fun as all sorts of chemistry is… I DO NOT like reading about chemistry. This narrator - wow, amazing. Love the intonation and run expressions used here. Great read. Fascinating content too - and actually interesting because it literally sounds interesting.

Simple, yet interesting

I enjoyed the wide variety of culinary tips. It was a good and interesting listen.

Informative

Easy to listen through this book. I wanted to listen to it before spending time on the paper copy.

This was a fun n listen

If you are into chemistry and science and you love food this is a great book. If you have a burgeoning interest this book is great. I loved this as a fun listen especially the recipes. I have a science background so some of the basics which he goes through (quite well and in an easy manner to understand) I knew but a lot I didn’t and I tend to be an intuitive cook. But this was just so fun to know- like adult chemistry set in my kitchen! I read his other book Gut Reactions and didn’t like it the way I LOVE this one. Have fun with it!

Science of Food with a Few Fun Applixations

It seems many books on the subject of molecular gastronomy get bad reviews for being too “scientific”. Which is a bit like saying your omelet has too much egg in it... Science is what makes molecular gastronomy.

This book has a nice balance of presenting the science, real-world examples and even fun experiments to demonstrate the science. I recommend it if you are interested in this subject, but not if you’re looking for a cookbook .

This book is a repeating thrill with its knowledge

I repeatedly return for the beautiful wisdom that explains a great deal of phenomena in food's preparation. The performance could have been more captivating with appropriate doses of excitement.

Excellent information!

If anyone really, REALLY, likes to cook, they should learn about food science. Cooking is a science before it becomes an art. Once the science is understood, there is no stopping the artist from cooking spectacular creations.

Interesting facts

Interesting book. Definitely learned a lot of new interesting things related to how small adjustments in food can make big differences in the end product.

Kitchen Science

The book contains a lot of kitchen science (atoms, electrons, protons, particles, and ions) but it provides the basics to understand cooking reactions and components of food (such as the difference between bread flour, cake flour, and all-purpose flour). It's technical and goes deep into each topic. Some chapters are more interesting than others. For example, the author should have left out the chapter on making cheese (really, how many people are going to make cheese at home).

It’s a good book with some golden nuggets

But lacks breadth, both of recipes and phenomena. Liked the turkey, cheese and lemonade recipes.