Ludicrously well-funded amateur chef (and former Microsoft CTO) Nathan Myhrvold, who announced back in 2008 that he was writing a cookbook, has at last completed the project. Modernist Cuisine will be published December 1 and is now available for preorder on Amazon.com. What began as a 300-page volume about sous-vide cookery has grown into a 2,200-page, four-volume behemoth, encompassing virtually every science-based culinary technique Myhrvold and his team of twenty chef-scientists could find (or, in many cases, invent) in their gigantic, futuristic cooking lab.
Using its arsenal of “water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes,” the book promises to reveal the secrets to creations as mundane as the perfect French fry and as impractical as a mussel encased in a spherical gel of its own brine. And the hype is just as great as the page count: No less an endorser than Ferran Adrià blurbs that “this book will change the way we understand the kitchen.” With a $625 list price, it sure as hell better.
