Modernist Cuisine and Nathan Myhrvold

'Modernist Cuisine' dissects the art, science of the new cooking

Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft, applied his intellect, curiosity, deep passion for cooking and considerably deep pockets to produce the definitive work on the new cooking, "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking." He assembled a large team of professionals and contributors in creating the $625, five-volume tome, which includes 381 "example recipes," 180 "parametric recipes" (essentially graphs that each have about 10 recipes included) and 68 original "plated dish" entries.

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Before I posted on this, I looked for an existing topic it could be folded into. I found the use of 'modernist' and 'cuisine' has been used in only 14 posts. All but two posts were penned by GAF.

This tome to Modernist Cuisine is not expected until March. I think there is going to be more and more chatter about this as it heads toward publication.

Regards,

An mp3 of Grant Achatz and Nathan Myhrvold talk at the New York Public Library

Ed Levine's blog wrote:Myhrvold says he is often criticized for his predilection for cooking with chemicals. His response: "I tell them chemicals are made with elements, too, aren't they?"

Achatz was asked about possible applications for the home cook of what he does. He said with a wry smile, "Aren't thermal circulators the new microwave? I have always thought so."

I asked them about where delicious intersects with technology. Achatz's response: "I tend to evaluate rather than enjoy." Fascinating response, isn't it?
Myhrvold said delicious is often not what he's going for. He's trying to provoke people to think about and to taste food in different way. The element of surprise kept coming up over and over again.

I pre-ordered Modernist Cuisine back in early October, and the wait is making me antsy. I'm hoping that the book will be as useful to me, a home cook, and Myhvold claims. I expect the stuff on food safety, basic meat and vegetable handling, etc to be really worthwhile. At the very least, it will be a great coffee table book.

I am slowly getting getting used to the notion of using some of the more "chemically" ingredients. I'm trying hard just to come up to a method of cooking that would have been recognizable by maybe my great-grandmother. On the other hand, the notion of using a sub-gram accurate scale doesn't put me off.

So, in the meantime, I bought an inexpensive digital controller, and am starting sous vide "lite" in my slow cooker. The results have been good. The 60 hour chuck roast at 133 was maybe a little too gelatinous when warm, but the leftovers are some of the best beef I've had for sandwiches, just about as good as BBQ tongue.

Hi,

Coffee table book? It should be on a book stand at $625! Or merely $520.81 on Amazon.

To date the most expensive book I have bought was the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink at roughly $125. This was actually closer to $200, though I arranged to sell it at cost via Culinary Historians. Surprisingly, we sold over 30 sets.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:An mp3 of Grant Achatz and Nathan Myhrvold talk at the New York Public Library

At 37:00 there is a discussion of Chicago's food scene and its acceptance of modern cuisine.

Regards,

It's still not cheap, but you can buy Modernist Cuisine on the Canadian Amazon site for C$391.19, shipping not included. A few people on the eGullet site have ordered and rec'd the book at this price...

http://www.amazon.ca/Modernist-Cuisine- ... 521&sr=1-1

There's a huge amount of information in this thread, including comments from Nathan hisself:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/to ... ris-young/

HI,

I don't think anyone has a copy, unless it is a desk copy from the publisher, because the book is not expected out until March.

In the link mp3, Achatz and Myhrvold both commented on their interactions on e-Gullet. I believe the topic was sous-vide in the very early phases. There was an e-Gullet poster who was emulating their experiments and taking them even further. When Myhrvold (or was it Achatz) had a speaking engagement near where this poster lived, he proposed they meet. They were flabbergasted to learn this poster was a junior at Duke University. He used sous-vide because the food was encased in plastic, there were no detectable cooking odors, thus allowing him to cook in his dorm room without notice.

Regards,

I'm waiting for the Kindle version: $9.99.

The Game-Changing Cookbook: Nathan Myhrvold's 2,400-page 'Modernist Cuisine' upends everything you thought you knew about cooking

Here's the recipe for the most astonishing cookbook of our time: Take one multimillionaire computer genius, a team of 36 researchers, chefs and editors and a laboratory specially built for cooking experiments. After nearly four years of obsessive research, assemble 2,400 pages of results into a 47-pound, six-volume collection that costs $625 and requires four pounds of ink to print.

To call inventor Nathan Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine: The Art & Science of Cooking," on sale next month, a "cookbook" is akin to calling James Joyce's "Ulysses" "a story." The book is a large-scale investigation into the math, science and physics behind cooking tasks from making juicy and crisp beer-can chicken to coating a foie-gras bonbon in sour cherry gel. There is precedent in this genre—science writer Harold McGee has published popular books explaining kitchen science, and chefs Thomas Keller and Ferran Adrià have written about sous vide and other techniques of avant-garde gastronomy—but nothing reaches the scope and magnitude of Mr. Myhrvold's book. While it will likely appeal to professional chefs, within its pages are insights that even the humblest home cooks can use to improve their meals. The book puts traditional cooking wisdom under scientific scrutiny, destroying old assumptions and creating new cooking approaches.

Another reason to like this effort, "Among the book's revelations: Expensive pots and pans are a waste of money. Organic food is no healthier than non-organic."

I'm getting antsy about this, and hoping that my pre-order is not lost/forgotten. I am really looking forward to this. The index is down-loadable. Its 114 pages long. Shows how many topics are considered. May need to take some vacation days to wade thru the volumes.

What little dabbling I've done w. sous vide has resulted in some fine food. I suspect the info (which has also been stated elsewhere) about safe meat cooking temperatures will change the ways lots of people cook. It would be great if the demand for temperature controllers is large enough to bring the cost down below $100.

gdenby wrote:What little dabbling I've done w. sous vide has resulted in some fine food. I suspect the info (which has also been stated elsewhere) about safe meat cooking temperatures will change the ways lots of people cook. It would be great if the demand for temperature controllers is large enough to bring the cost down below $100.

You may consider Bill/SFNM's solution, who can afford whatever he wants:

Subject: Sous Vide cooker for home

Bill/SFNM wrote:

toria wrote:I also heard you can approximate Sous vide cooking at home with a rice cooker put on the "warm" cycle. I saw a recipe once calling for cooking pot roast overnight at the warm temperature. Was afraid to try it though.

This is my SV rig. I also use a $22 aquarium water circulator. It is rated for 95F, but I haven't had any problems (yet) at 130F-140F.

FYI, I just received the following message from Chris Amirault at eG:

Chris Amirault wrote:no one has received a book that they've ordered yet. A few volunteers got online access through this week, and I got an advanced loaner copy. Delivery still set for early March, I believe.

=R=

Some preliminary reviews I stumbled across...

http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2011/02/how- ... sispart-1/

http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2011/02/how- ... sispart-2/

Modernist Cuisine reviewed by Michael Ruhlman in the NYT today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/dinin ... ref=dining

Just a quick vent....

Arghhh, arghhhh, arghh!

For those following the release of this book, you know that there were problems with the ship date, and there were only 500 books in the first shipping batch. I ordered "MC" back in August. On Wed. I checked to see what my Amazon order status was. It said the book had not shipped, but was due to ship the day before. I figured I had been bumped into the next batch of shipments.

But this morning, it occurred to me to check my e-mails, which I had not done since Wednesday last. To my shock, I found a notice from yesterday from Amazon saying there had been a problem with my credit card submission, and I had 24 hours to remedy the problem, or loose the order. It was then 25 hours, and in the passing 6 months, my wife had lost our previous credit card, and so the charge I made last year failed

The suspense is killing me...

Oh well, maybe by May. In the interim I am skimming a translation of Escoffier's Art Culinaire. At least I will be up on the last revolution in cooking.

As food-geeky as I am (still working on constructing my own immersion circulator, have made a couple dishes from the "Alinea" cookbook, alginate stocked in my pantry), I don't see buying a $600 cookbook, even discounted to $470-sumthin. The spiral notebook of charts and tables, that I'd buy for $35. Maybe MrsF will get me a really nice xmas gift this year.

JoelF wrote:As food-geeky as I am (still working on constructing my own immersion circulator, have made a couple dishes from the "Alinea" cookbook, alginate stocked in my pantry), I don't see buying a $600 cookbook, even discounted to $470-sumthin. The spiral notebook of charts and tables, that I'd buy for $35. Maybe MrsF will get me a really nice xmas gift this year.

I view MC as much as a cookbook as an "art book." I've been involved in a minor way in producing those for years. The quality of MC's picture reproductions are easily $470-ish. I admit to having swallowed deeply before making the purchase, but I actually think at the price, it is a steal. And it is my xmas and birthday in one, my wife being very indulgent of me.

Never really a fan of "modernist cuisine," John Mariani weighs in on this book as well as Grant Achatz' new memoir in a very negative light: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/john-mariani-grant-achatz-031811?click=news

Excerpts from the article:

"Über-chef Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck, outside of London, once served me melted Cadbury chocolate bars over bloody rare squab. Chicago's Homaru Cantu of Moto — who once said, "If we can take an Explorer satellite and send it into space, why can't we make a dish levitate or glow in the dark?" — served me smoked watermelon and had his waiter instruct me to inhale burning aromas from a brazier for exactly one minute before he brought the fish. (Cantu also inkjets photographs on edible menus — just like Carvel has done on ice cream cakes for thirty years.) It seems never to occur to such chefs that maybe there is no good reason — even a gustatory one — that dishes should levitate or glow in the dark. And then there's Grant Achatz of Chicago's Alinea, who once served me a piece of limp, dehydrated bacon dipped in butterscotch, apple, and thyme and hung on a tiny silver clothesline; a single, peeled Thompson seedless grape dipped in peanut butter and wrapped in bread; a broccoli stem with dehydrated grapefruit and steelhead fish roe; and corned bison, with sauces ranging from freeze-dried blueberries to caramelized fennel — which I ate, as instructed, while I sniffed the aroma of burning cinnamon sticks on the table. (More on the insufferable Achatz below.)

The praise heaped on such cuisiniers by media hype, with the word "genius" bandied about as if speaking of Picasso or Mozart, obscures the fact that such culinary experiments have long been part of gastronomy, not least by American food companies like Kellogg's, Birds Eye, and General Mills — all with test facilities easily costing millions more than Myhrvold's 4,000-square-foot kitchen. Has anyone considered the years of hard work that went into creating cereals like cornflakes, shredded wheat, and Lucky Charms, which were invented in 1962? With their colored marshmallows and shamrock-shaped wheat bits made with modified corn starch, corn syrup, dextrose, gelatin, calcium carbonate, trisodium phosphate, and artificial color — the kinds of chemical additives molecular cuisiniers have in their pantries? And the admirable sous-vide process is really just a chef's cooking shortcut that was pioneered as boil-in-a-bag decades ago.....

....Some chefs can be ridiculously stuck in outdated traditions, but technological advances like the electric beater and food processor that take the drudgery out of chopping and pureeing food have been readily accepted — even microwaves. But the majority of chefs and home cooks try very hard to repeat and refine their processes and recipes over years to make them taste better, then more often than not share their "secrets" via recipe swaps and cookbooks — none weighing forty-eight pounds. I prefer to trust the indefatigable kitchen crew of Cook's Illustrated, who may go through dozens of recipes to come up with the best one for cornbread or clam chowder. Or a brilliant chef like Thomas Keller, whose masterful roast chicken recipe has only grown simpler over the years.

Which leads to the question, what exactly has been the effect and influence of the modernist/molecular chefs' ideas on other chefs? The simple answer is: next to zero. Aside from the momentary faddishness of Ferran Adrià's foam sauces — now a cliché — nothing has been adapted from the modernist movement, and the number of such chefs comprising the movement in the entire world might be counted on two hands. Despite its sillier excrescences back in the 1970s, France's la nouvelle cuisine took root everywhere, for its concepts insisted on shorter cooking times to maintain essential flavors, use of the freshest seasonal ingredients, lighter sauces, a concern for guests' health, and the rejection of complication in cooking. If modernist cuisine were a real revolution, it would have flowed into mainstream kitchens and been adopted by all serious cooks. But it's been around now for two decades and the sale of nitrous oxide and centrifuges has not exactly soared."

Cathy2 wrote:In the link mp3, Achatz and Myhrvold both commented on their interactions on e-Gullet. I believe the topic was sous-vide in the very early phases. There was an e-Gullet poster who was emulating their experiments and taking them even further. When Myhrvold (or was it Achatz) had a speaking engagement near where this poster lived, he proposed they meet. They were flabbergasted to learn this poster was a junior at Duke University. He used sous-vide because the food was encased in plastic, there were no detectable cooking odors, thus allowing him to cook in his dorm room without notice.

I'm guessing this is our own BryanZ.

See http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukema ... fare1.html

Myhrvold was on Colbert last night plugging the book. Looks gorgeous (a little tough to justify, but it's a handsome set).

As I stepped up to my front door yesterday evening, I saw a box set in front of the sill, with the word "HEAVY" printed on the side. Finally! After a nine month wait, I had recieved my copy of "Modernist Cuisine." Ten minutes later, having worked thru the heavy duty packing, I opened the volumes, and was immediately flabbergasted. Having spent several hours skimming over the thousands of pages, I remain astonished at the scope, depth, and finesse of everything presented.

"Modernist Cuisine" is not a cookbook. I would not call it an encyclopedia, quite. I would not call it a set of coffe table books, although I suspect I will consume a lot of coffee working thru the wonderfully illustrated pages. They are every bit as gorgeous as a pile of fine art books. I would also not call it exercise equipment, but holding up 8 pound volumes to read some of the fine print can be a work-out.

My first impression, as someone who began to take home cooking seriously fairly late in life, is in agreement with the authors. I expect most of the information to be useful, and about 60% of the recipes to be do-able with a few more tools, such as a scale accurate to 10th of a gram (my current one is only good to 1g.) Liquid nitrogen will probably not find a place in my kitchen soon, but I do recall that my mother used dry ice back in the '60s to help make baked Alaska, and so I would not rule out super cold methods.

But it is obvious that much of what is produced requires equipment beyond the budget of most cooks. However, if I was running a professional kitchen, with the $20K that it would take at a minimum for the advanced tools, I think "Modernist Cuisine" would be a daily reference.

To err is human.

Cathy2 wrote:To err is human.

Yes, the errata list is also impressive Earlier reports were quite minor, and the few I've run across are pretty much typos. I am unhappy about the recipe errors, because any method so dependent on exact measures should not make mistakes like "in step six, on the Oxtail Pho recipe, “1 bar / 15 psi for 3 h” should read “1 bar / 15 psi for 1½ h.” I will have to print out my own errata sheet for now, at least.

I guess the 2nd edition buyers will not have this to worry about.

For myself, I suspect the 2nd edition will be out by the time I wade thru the mass of info I need to review before trying some of the more complex methods.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy. The page illustrating 7 different types of fried chicken breading is enticing, especially the last 2, one of which uses an alcohol infused batter, and the other a puffed starch. Really something to aim at.

HI,

For a reference I guide I used extensively, I remember spending the good part of an evening writing in all the corrections in the errata sheet. While a pain in the short term, it saved me from lots of errors.

No matter what, you have a bonafied first edition.

Regards,

Modernist Cuising grilling tips.

Cathy2 wrote:Modernist Cuising grilling tips.

Bacon fat mixed with water in a spray bottle sounds like a really interesting way to add flavor to grilled foods.

I heard him on NPR this afternoon as well discussing BBQ. He did a great job explaining how the plateau in cooking a brisket is a combination of two things - evaporation causing the start of the plateau and then the cook mopping the meat frequently to keep it from drying out, thereby extending the plateau. He advocated the use of the Texas Crutch. I've been impressed by almost every interview I've read with Myhrvold, but this was the most impressive for me so far. It was a perfect example of how the work he's done goes far beyond Molecular Gastronomy, and is ultimately a great resource for all types of cooking.

This is the broadcast you heard earlier today (I hope):

High Tech Meets High Art in 'Modernist Cuisine'
July 1, 2011
[21 min 39 sec]
Former Microsoft CTO and modern-day Renaissance man Nathan Myhrvold is focusing on a new passion: high-tech cooking. Myhrvold discusses recipes from the new mega cookbook, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Think hamburgers dipped in liquid nitrogen, french fries cooked with ultrasound, and pea butter whirled in a centrifuge.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137555238 ... st-cuisine

I received my copy of "Modernist Cuisine" yesterday and, well, it's worth the price. Fantastic photography, great recipes - even if you don't have a rotovap or combi oven - an incredible resource. UPS guy got a workout - the box weighed over fifty pounds!

I had been holding off on even considering this book until the price became a little more reasonable. There seems to be bubble in effect with copies from the first printing going for $2800 on eBay!

But after reading Corby Kummer's review in the latest issue of Technology Review, I decided to take a peek at the copy a friend recently received. I could not put it down. Kummer's praise is spot-on.

It's now on my Amazon Wish List. Not sure if I'll pull the trigger at the current $478 price, but there is little temptation right now since the book seems to be between printings. My friend has offered to let me borrow one of the volumes, but I suspect that was just a polite formality.