ON FOOD AND COOKING The Science and Lore of the Kitchen COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED Harold McGee Illustrations by Patricia Dorfman, Justin Greene, and Ann McGee SCRIBNER New York London Toronto Sydney l ON FOOD AND COOKING The Science and Lore of the Kitchen COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED Harold McGee Illustrations by Patricia Dorfman, Justin Greene, and Ann McGee SCRIBNER New York London Toronto Sydney l scribner 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 1984, 2004 by Harold McGee Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Patricia Dorfman Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Justin Greene Line drawings by Ann B. McGee All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. scribner and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work. Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com Set in Sabon Library of Congress Control Number: 2004058999 ISBN: 1-4165-5637-0 Page 884 constitutes a continuation of the copyright page. To Soyoung and to my family contents acknowledgments ix introduction: cooking and science, 1984 and 2004 1 Chapter 1 Milk and Dairy Products 7 Chapter 2 Eggs 68 Chapter 3 Meat 118 Chapter 4 Fish and Shellfish 179 Chapter 5 Edible Plants: An Introduction to Fruits and Vegetables, Herbs and Spices 243 Chapter 6 A Survey of Common Vegetables 300 Chapter 7 A Survey of Common Fruits 350 Chapter 8 Flavorings from Plants: Herbs and Spices, Tea and Coffee 385 Chapter 9 Seeds: Grains, Legumes, and Nuts 451 Chapter 10 Cereal Doughs and Batters: Bread, Cakes, Pastry, Pasta 515 Chapter 11 Sauces 580 Chapter 12 Sugars, Chocolate, and Confectionery 645 Chapter 13 Wine, Beer, and Distilled Spirits 713 Chapter 14 Cooking Methods and Utensil Materials 777 Chapter 15 The Four Basic Food Molecules 792 appendix: a chemistry primer 811 selected references 819 index 835 vii acknowledgments Along with many food writers today, I feel a great debt of gratitude to Alan Davidson for the way he brought new substance, scope, and playfulness to our subject. On top of that, it was Alan who informed me that I would have to revise On Food and Cooking—before I’d even held the first copy in my hands! At our first meeting in 1984, over lunch, he asked me what the book had to say about fish. I told him that I mentioned fish in passing as one form of animal muscle and thus of meat. And so this great fish enthusiast and renowned authority on the creatures of several seas gently suggested that, in view of the fact that fish are diverse creatures and their flesh very unlike meat, they really deserve special and extended attention. Well, yes, they really do. There are many reasons for wishing that this revision hadn’t taken as long as it did, and one of the biggest is the fact that I can’t show Alan the new chapter on fish. I’ll always be grateful to Alan and to Jane for their encouragement and advice, and for the years of friendship which began with that lunch. This book and my life would have been much poorer without them. I would also have liked to give this book to Nicholas Kurti—bracing myself for the discussion to come! Nicholas wrote a heartwarmingly positive review of the first edition in Nature, then followed it up with a Sunday-afternoon visit and an extended interrogation based on the pages of ques- tions that he had accumulated as he wrote the review. Nicholas’s energy, curiosity, and enthusiasm for good food and the telling “little experiment” were infectious, and animated the early Erice workshops. They and he are much missed. Coming closer to home and the present, I thank my family for the affection and patient optimism that have kept me going day after day: son John and daughter Flo- rence, who have lived with this book and experimental dinners for more than half their years, and enlivened both with their gusto and strong opinions; my father, Chuck McGee, and mother, Louise Hammersmith; brother Michael and sisters Ann and Joan; and Chuck Hammersmith, Werner Kurz, Richard Thomas, and Florence Jean and Harold Long. Throughout these last few trying years, my wife Sharon Long has been constantly caring and supportive. I’m deeply grateful to her for that gift. Milly Marmur, my onetime publisher, longtime agent, and now great friend, has been a source of propulsive energy over the course of a marathon whose length nei- ther of us foresaw. I’ve been lucky to enjoy her warmth, patience, good sense, and her skill at nudging without noodging. I owe thanks to many people at Scribner and Simon & Schuster. Maria Guarna- schelli commissioned this revision with inspiring enthusiasm, and Scribner pub- lisher Susan Moldow and S&S president Carolyn Reidy have been its committed advocates ever since. Beth Wareham tire- lessly supervised all aspects of editing, pro- duction, and publication. Rica Buxbaum Allannic made many improvements in the ix x on food and cooking manuscript with her careful editing; Mia Crowley-Hald and her team produced the book under tough time constraints with meticulous care; and Erich Hobbing wel- comed my ideas about layout and designed pages that flow well and read clearly. Jef- frey Wilson kept contractual and other legal matters smooth and peaceful, and Lucy Kenyon organized some wonderful early publicity. I appreciate the marvelous team effort that has launched this book into the world. I thank Patricia Dorfman and Justin Greene for preparing the illustrations with patience, skill, and speed, and Ann Hirsch, who produced the micrograph of a wheat kernel for this book. I’m happy to be able to include a few line drawings from the first edition by my sister Ann, who has been prevented by illness from contributing to this revision. She was a wonderful collabo- rator, and I’ve missed her sharp eye and good humor very much. I’m grateful to sev- eral food scientists for permission to share their photographs of food structure and microstructure: they are H. Douglas Goff, R. Carl Hoseney, Donald D. Kasarda, William D. Powrie, and Alastair T. Pringle. Alexandra Nickerson expertly compiled some of the most important pages in this book, the index. Several chefs have been kind enough to invite me into their kitchens—or laborato- ries—to experience and talk about cooking at its most ambitious. My thanks to Fritz Blank, to Heston Blumenthal, and especially to Thomas Keller and his colleagues at The French Laundry, including Eric Ziebold, Devin Knell, Ryan Fancher, and Donald Gonzalez. I’ve learned a lot from them, and look forward to learning much more. Particular sections of this book have benefited from the careful reading and com- ments of Anju and Hiten Bhaya, Devaki Bhaya and Arthur Grossman, Poornima and Arun Kumar, Sharon Long, Mark Pas- tore, Robert Steinberg, and Kathleen, Ed, and Aaron Weber. I’m very grateful for their help, and absolve them of any respon- sibility for what I’ve done with it. I’m glad for the chance to thank my friends and my colleagues in the worlds of writing and food, all sources of stimulating questions, answers, ideas, and encourage- ment over the years: Shirley and Arch Cor- riher, the best of company on the road, at the podium, and on the phone; Lubert Stryer, who gave me the chance to see the science of pleasure advanced and immedi- ately applied; and Kurt and Adrienne Alder, Peter Barham, Gary Beauchamp, Ed Behr, Paul Bertolli, Tony Blake, Glynn Christian, Jon Eldan, Anya Fernald, Len Fisher, Alain Harrus, Randolph Hodgson, Philip and Mary Hyman, John Paul Khoury, Kurt Koessel, Aglaia Kremezi, Anna Tasca Lanza, David Lockwood, Jean Matricon, Fritz Maytag, Jack McInerney, Alice Medrich, Marion Nestle, Ugo and Beatrice Palma, Alan Parker, Daniel Patterson, Thorvald Pedersen, Charles Perry, Maricel Presilla, P.N. Ravindran, Judy Rodgers, Nick Ruello, Helen Saberi, Mary Taylor Simeti, Melpo Skoula, Anna and Jim Spu- dich, Jeffrey Steingarten, Jim Tavares, Hervé This, Bob Togasaki, Rick Vargas, Despina Vokou, Ari Weinzweig, Jonathan White, Paula Wolfert, and Richard Zare. Finally, I thank Soyoung Scanlan for sharing her understanding of cheese and of traditional forms of food production, for reading many parts of the manuscript and helping me clarify both thought and expression, and above all for reminding me, when I had forgotten, what writing and life are all about. ON FOOD AND COOKING The everyday alchemy of creating food for the body and the mind. This 17th-century woodcut compares the alchemical (“chymick”) work of the bee and the scholar, who trans- form nature’s raw materials into honey and knowledge. Whenever we cook we become prac- tical chemists, drawing on the accumulated knowledge of generations, and transforming what the Earth offers us into more concentrated forms of pleasure and nourishment. (The first Latin caption reads “Thus we bees make honey, not for ourselves”; the second, “All things in books,” the library being the scholar’s hive. Woodcut from the collection of the International Bee Research Association.) introduction Cooking and Science, 1984 and 2004 This is the revised and expanded second edition of a book that I first published in 1984, twenty long years ago. In 1984, canola oil and the computer mouse and compact discs were all novelties. So was the idea of inviting cooks to explore the bio- logical and chemical insides of foods. It was a time when a book like this really needed an introduction! Twenty years ago the worlds of science and cooking were neatly compartmental- ized. There were the basic sciences, physics and chemistry and biology, delving deep into the nature of matter and life. There was food science, an applied science mainly concerned with understanding the materials and processes of industrial manufacturing. And there was the world of small-scale home and restaurant cooking, traditional crafts that had never attracted much scien- tific attention. Nor did they really need any. Cooks had been developing their own body of practical knowledge for thousands of years, and had plenty of reliable recipes to work with. I had been fascinated by chemistry and physics when I was growing up, experi- mented with electroplating and Tesla coils and telescopes, and went to Caltech plan- ning to study astronomy. It wasn’t until after I’d changed directions and moved on to English literature—and had begun to cook—that I first heard of food science. At dinner one evening in 1976 or 1977, a friend from New Orleans wondered aloud why dried beans were such a problematic food, why indulging in red beans and rice had to cost a few hours of sometimes embarrassing discomfort. Interesting ques- tion! A few days later, working in the library and needing a break from 19th- century poetry, I remembered it and the answer a biologist friend had dug up (indi- gestible sugars), thought I would browse in some food books, wandered over to that section, and found shelf after shelf of strange titles. Journal of Food Science. Poultry Sci- ence. Cereal Chemistry. I flipped through a few volumes, and among the mostly bewil- dering pages found hints of answers to other questions that had never occurred to me. Why do eggs solidify when we cook them? Why do fruits turn brown when we cut them? Why is bread dough bouncily alive, and why does bounciness make good bread? Which kinds of dried beans are the worst offenders, and how can a cook tame them? It was great fun to make and share these lit- tle discoveries, and I began to think that many people interested in food might enjoy them. Eventually I found time to immerse myself in food science and history and write On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. As I finished, I realized that cooks more serious than my friends and I might be skeptical about the relevance of cells and molecules to their craft. So I spent much of the introduction trying to bolster my case. I began by quoting an unlikely trio of 1