User:Stefan-S/Modernist Cuisine

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a book by Dr., Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, published by The Cooking Lab 14 March 2011. The book have been described as the “The cookbook to end all cookbooks”, it is 2,438 pages and weighs 21 kg, the book is a guide to the science of contemporary cooking and an encyclopedia of contemporary cooking , the 6 volumes covers History and fundamentals, Techniques and Equipment, Animal and plants, Ingredients and preparation, plated dish recipes and one last volume kitchen manual.

History
The idea for the book came up when Nathan got a water controlled water bath for sous vide cooking in 2003, he tried to find information about this new cooking technique that had been invented in 1980’s and that was used in many restaurants. But he could only find a few articles and one book (in Spanish). He posted messages on eGullet, a high-end cooking forum and found out that there was no information. Nathan was a good cook, having attended Ecole de Cuisine la Varenne a cooking school in Burgundy, France and having cooked part time at a French restaurant in Seattle owned by Thierry Rautureau. He was also scientist, having been the CTO and chief strategist of Microsoft he combined the food and science skills, doing experimentation and calculated the cooking time for sous vide cooking himself. When answering the question he himself had asked about one year earlier in eGullet, someone suggested that he should write a book. Doing this he soon realized that he could not write the book he wanted himself, if the book would be what he wanted it had to be done by a team with real equipment. He started buying equipment for his cooking lab in his Intellectual Ventures lab. The equipment was both standard cooking equipment, but also homogenizer, freeze-driers, a 50 G centrifuge, weapons-grade laser , ultrasonic welders , 100 ton hydraulic press and other industrial equipment. After that he started hiring the authors, cooks or researchers. First Chris Young who had just stopped his work of leading the development kitchen in Heston Blumenthalers Fat Duck restaurant in England. Chris suggested Maxime Bilet also from the Fat duck. In total 36 researchers, chefs and editors worked on the book and 72 prominent chefs was consulted Initially the book was planned to be 150 pages on sous vide, in late 2009 is was planned to 1,500 pages but eventually it was pressed at 2,438 pages. The cost of the book is unknown but it is confirmed that it has costed more than a million US dollars to produce.

Acclaim
Ferran Adrià have claimed "This book will change the way we understand the kitchen", David Chang of Momofuku Ko stated "Only someone like Nathan could do something this comprehensive and rigorous, and we will probably never see another cookbook like it again."