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Title: Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking
Author: Herve This (Translated by Jody Gladding)
Genre: Cooking/Pop science
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: The scientific explanation behind many culinary puzzles.
Thoughts: I can't quite put my finger on why this one didn't work for me. Somehow, the information never quite seemed to stick in my head. It's not like I'm intimidated by chemistry--I've got a degree in engineering, I've hacked my way through science textbooks much denser than this. And I've already picked up a decent working knowledge of the chemical underpinnings of cooking.
I'm not sure whether the problem lies in the translation or in some kind of culture gap. But I constantly felt as if there were assumptions being made that didn't make sense to me. Which pieces of information were prioritized, which questions were asked, which chemical processes required detailed vs brief explanations--I constantly felt surprised by his choices, and not in a good way.
I think it also would have been very helpful to have more illustrations/diagrams. Chemistry is a science that is extremely dependent on geometry. Perhaps a chemist has the layouts of glucose vs fructose automatically in his head, but for laypeople, writing out the molecular structures would go a long way towards making some of these explanations easier to follow.
I liked the theory of the book. But apparently so little felt either relevant or fully comprehensible that, weeks later, almost nothing has stuck.
Author: Herve This (Translated by Jody Gladding)
Genre: Cooking/Pop science
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: The scientific explanation behind many culinary puzzles.
Thoughts: I can't quite put my finger on why this one didn't work for me. Somehow, the information never quite seemed to stick in my head. It's not like I'm intimidated by chemistry--I've got a degree in engineering, I've hacked my way through science textbooks much denser than this. And I've already picked up a decent working knowledge of the chemical underpinnings of cooking.
I'm not sure whether the problem lies in the translation or in some kind of culture gap. But I constantly felt as if there were assumptions being made that didn't make sense to me. Which pieces of information were prioritized, which questions were asked, which chemical processes required detailed vs brief explanations--I constantly felt surprised by his choices, and not in a good way.
I think it also would have been very helpful to have more illustrations/diagrams. Chemistry is a science that is extremely dependent on geometry. Perhaps a chemist has the layouts of glucose vs fructose automatically in his head, but for laypeople, writing out the molecular structures would go a long way towards making some of these explanations easier to follow.
I liked the theory of the book. But apparently so little felt either relevant or fully comprehensible that, weeks later, almost nothing has stuck.
