On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

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Before becoming a food science writer, McGee was a literature and writing instructor at Yale. McGee has also written for Nature, [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] Health, The New York Times, the World Book Encyclopedia, The Art of Eating, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, and Physics Today [16] and lectured on kitchen chemistry at cooking schools, universities, The Oxford Symposia on Food and Cookery, the Denver Natural History Museum and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. For a brief time he wrote a regular column for the New York Times, The Curious Cook, which examined, and often debunked, conventional kitchen wisdom. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] His latest book is Nose dive: a field guide to the world's smells (2020). [22] Once upon a time, I was expressing my frustration with books on cooking to a chemist friend -- primarily that most books on cooking treat cooking as this magical art. They presume lots of knowledge on the part of the reader and they give directions that theoretically make the food what it's supposed to be, rarely explaining WHY you want to cook this meat at temperature x or mince this thing instead of slice, or whatever. I wanted something that answered a bit more of the Why? Milk fat accounts for much of the body, nutritional value, and economic value of milk. The milk-fat globules carry the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K), and about half the calories of whole milk. The higher the fat content of milk, the more cream or butter can be made from it, and so the higher the price it will bring. Most cows secrete more fat in winter, due mainly to concentrated winter feed and the approaching end of their lactation period. Certain breeds, notably Guernseys and Jerseys from the Channel Islands between Britain and France, produce especially rich milk and large fat globules. Sheep and buffalo milks contain up to twice the butterfat of whole cow's milk (p. 13). When and why did humans extend our biological heritage as milk drinkers to the cultural practice of drinking the milk of other animals? Archaeological evidence suggests that sheep and goats were domesticated in the grasslands and open forest of present-day Iran and Iraq between 8000 and 9000 BCE, a thousand years before the far larger, fiercer cattle. At first these animals would have been kept for meat and skins, but the discovery of milking was a significant advance. Dairy animals could produce the nutritional equivalent of a slaughtered meat animal or more each year for several years, and in manageable daily increments. Dairying is the most efficient means of obtaining nourishment from uncultivated land, and may have been especially important as farming communities spread outward from Southwest Asia. Industrial and Scientific Innovations Beginning around 1830, industrialization transformed European and American dairying. The railroads made it possible to get fresh country milk to the cities, where rising urban populations and incomes fueled demand, and new laws regulated milk quality. Steam-powered farm machinery meant that cattle could be bred and raised for milk production alone, not for a compromise between milk and hauling, so milk production boomed, and more than ever was drunk fresh. With the invention of machines for milking, cream separation, and churning, dairying gradually moved out the hands of milkmaids and off the farms, which increasingly supplied milk to factories for mass production of cream, butter, and cheese.

a b McGee, Harold James (1978). Keats and the Progress of Taste (PhD thesis). Yale University. ProQuest 302889235. 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 biological and chemical insides of foods. It was a time when a book like this really needed an introduction!Pasteurization and UHT Treatments In the 1860s, the French chemist Louis Pasteur studied the spoilage of wine and beer and developed a moderate heat treatment that preserved them while minimizing changes in their flavor. It took several decades for pasteurization to catch on in the dairy. Nowadays, in industrial-scale production, it's a practical necessity. Collecting and pooling milk from many different farms increases the risk that a given batch will be contaminated; and the plumbing and machinery required for the various stages of processing afford many more opportunities for contamination. Pasteurization extends the shelf life of milk by killing pathogenic and spoilage microbes and by inactivating milk enzymes, especially the fat splitters, whose slow but steady activity can make it unpalatable. Pasteurized milk stored below 40°F/5°C should remain drinkable for 10 to 18 days. Cressey, Daniel (2009). "Q&A with Harold McGee: The molecular master chef". Nature. 458 (7239): 707. doi: 10.1038/458707a. PMID 19360069.

McGEE ON FOOD AND COOKING is a masterpiece of gastronomic writing; a rich, addictive blend of chemistry, history and anecdote that no self-respecting foodie or cook can afford to be without. McGee, Harold J.; Long, Sharon R.; Briggs, Winslow R. (1984). "Why whip egg whites in copper bowls?". Nature. 308 (5960): 667–668. Bibcode: 1984Natur.308..667M. doi: 10.1038/308667a0. S2CID 4372579. The first fluid secreted by the mammary gland is colostrum, a creamy, yellow solution of concentrated fat, vitamins, and proteins, especially immunoglobulins and antibodies. After a few days, when the colostrum flow has ceased and the milk is saleable, the calf is put on a diet of reconstituted and soy milks, and the cow is milked two or three times daily to keep the secretory cells working at full capacity. How and why did such a thing as milk ever come to be? It came along with warm-bloodedness, hair, and skin glands, all of which distinguish mammals from reptiles. Milk may have begun around 300 million years ago as a protective and nourishing skin secretion for hatchlings being incubated on their mother's skin, as is true for the platypus today. Once it evolved, milk contributed to the success of the mammalian family. It gives newborn animals the advantage of ideally formulated food from the mother even after birth, and therefore the opportunity to continue their physical development outside the womb. The human species has taken full advantage of this opportunity: we are completely helpless for months after birth, while our brains finish growing to a size that would be difficult to accommodate in the womb and birth canal. In this sense, milk helped make possible the evolution of our large brain, and so helped make us the unusual animals we are.The Goat The goat and sheep belong to the "ovicaprid" branch of the ruminant family, smaller animals that are especially at home in mountainous country. The goat, Capra hircus, comes from a denizen of the mountains and semidesert regions of central Asia, and was probably the first animal after the dog to be domesticated, between 8000 and 9000 BCE in present-day Iran and Iraq. It is the hardiest of the Eurasian dairy animals, and will browse just about any sort of vegetation, including woody scrub. Its omnivorous nature, small size, and good yield of distinctively flavored milk -- the highest of any dairy animal for its body weight -- have made it a versatile milk and meat animal in marginal agricultural areas. I have used Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking whenever I've had questions on the chemistry of food or to understand some aspect of the cooking process." —Jacques Pépin Perplexity about Calcium and Osteoporosis Our bones are constructed from two primary materials: proteins, which form a kind of scaffolding, and calcium phosphate, which acts as a hard, mineralized, strengthening filler. Bone tissue is constantly being deconstructed and rebuilt throughout our adult lives, so healthy bones require adequate protein and calcium supplies from our diet. Many women in industrialized countries lose so much bone mass after menopause that they're at high risk for serious fractures. Dietary calcium clearly helps prevent this potentially dangerous loss, or osteoporosis. Milk and dairy products are the major source of calcium in dairying countries, and U.S. government panels have recommended that adults consume the equivalent of a quart (liter) of milk daily to prevent osteoporosis. Harold James McGee (born October 3, 1951) is an American author who writes about the chemistry and history of food science and cooking. He is best known for his seminal book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen first published in 1984 [3] and revised in 2004. [5] [6] [7] [8] Harold McGee tastes surstromming (Swedish fermented herring) at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. (2010) Early life [ edit ] Until industrial times, dairying was done on the farm, and in many countries mainly by women, who milked the animals in early morning and after noon and then worked for hours to churn butter or make cheese. Country people could enjoy good fresh milk, but in the cities, with confined cattle fed inadequately on spent brewers' grain, most people saw only watered-down, adulterated, contaminated milk hauled in open containers through the streets. Tainted milk was a major cause of child mortality in early Victorian times.