A couple of books have caught my eye during the year and have naturally made their way into my Christmas wish list (and some I’ve already ordered myself). Please let me know if there are books you belive should be on this list that I have missed.

Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking
by Simon Quellen Field
288 pages

The back cover states “When you’re cooking, you’re a chemist!”. I couldn’t agree more and figured this was a book for me. I already have my copy in front of me and see there are many interesting observations and experiments described.

Heston Blumenthal at Home
by Heston Blumenthal
408 pages

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria
by Ferran Adrià
384 pages

Ferran and Heston have jumped onto the cooking-at-home-with-great-chefs waggon. They’d be more than welcome to come and cook in my kitchen, but until that happens I’ll let their books inspire me. An important thing about these books is that, given their close collaboration with scientists, I have a high expectation that the advice given in all recipes should be scientifically sound (which of course is not the case for many other cook books).

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters
by Gordon M. Shepherd
288 pages

I stumbled across this one by chance. It looks like a “must have” too me, and my copy is already on its way. In an interview with Salon, the author Gordon M. Shepherd, a professor of neurobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, says that:
“I began to realize that increasingly smell was for sensing the flavor of food. It goes almost unrecognized as we eat our food because we think it all comes from taste in our mouths. The more research that I did on flavor, the more I realized that the sense of smell was the dominant sense in flavor — and that we are almost totally unaware of it.”

The Oxford Companion to Beer
edited by Garrett Oliver
960 pages

Having ventured into brewing I found this book quite irresistable!

The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking
edited by Cesar Vega, Job Ubbink and Erik van der Linden
336 pages

I’ve mentioned this book previously. With 35 essays covering a range of topics this should be of interest to many Khymos readers!

Apart from these books we just have to face it: there’s no way around Modernist cuisine. If you don’t own a copy yet I’m quite sure it still sits there on the top of your wish list. And – if you happen to read Swedish – I would highly recommend the recently published book Matmolekyler (“Food molecules”) by Malin Sandström and Lisa Förare Winbladh (also check out their blog blog with the same name – also in Swedish).

A while ago I came across the article “Christmas gingerbread (Lebkuchen) and Christmas cheer–review of the potential role of mood elevating amphetamine-like compounds formed in vivo and in furno” (abstract from NCBI, free full text pdf download from publisher). The paper reviews a hypothesis proposed by Alexander Shulgin in a series of papers appearing in Nature in the 60′s. Shulgin noted that allylbenzenes and propenylbenzens found in many spices are “merely lacking ammonia to become amphetamines”. The author reviews the evidence that such substances may be converted in the body to psychoactive metabolites, but concludes that the evidence is equivocal at best. However, the author launches an alternative theory:

“… the formation of these compounds during the cooking process, what I have called “in furno.” Examination of the Lebkuchen recipe in Table 3 reveals chemical constituents that, when heated together in furno might plausibly result in some ammonia addition to the alkenylbenzene double bonds, which would lead to the presence in the Lebkuchen of 4-methoxyamphetamine (PMA) from (E)-anethole and 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyamphetamine (HMA) from eugenol.”

But as the author prudently add: “Until the appropriate laboratory and clinical investigations are performed, it is merely a subject of speculation and fantasy.” Nevertheless is an entertaining paper to read, and I’m sure that this kind of “science triva” can cheer up discussions around the dinner tables in an otherwise dark December. And I must add that I really love the term in furno (i.e. in the oven, during the cooking/baking process) used alongside the more common in vivo and in vitro.

I’ve illustrated the proposed reactions in the scheme below. Anethole and eugenol are found in cloves/cinnamon and anise seeds respectively. Baker’s ammonia is known to chemists as ammonium carbonate, but also under names such as salt of hartshorn. It has a very strong smell of ammonia and upon heating it decomposes and releases ammonia which could possibly react with the allyl/propenyl groups.

[Found via the very funny NCBI ROFL blog]

If Richard Wiseman’s fork balancing trick is not challenging enough, why not try the fork balancing trick I did for part 8 (where I encourage experimentation in the kitchen) of my Ten tips for practical molecular gastronomy series. You only need two forks, two skewers, a wine cork and a little patience. If interested you can read more about the physics behind the balancing fork trick.

As the name suggests, the TGIF posts are a little less serious than what I otherwise post here at Khymos. I hope you enjoy it

I thought I’d do a twist on some chocolate cookies my Mom always makes for Christmas for TGRWT #13. I tried two versions with added caraway (and a litte bitter orange peel) – one where I omitted all the spices except cocoa and one where they were added together with all the spices in the original recipes.

Chocolate cookies with caraway
100 g butter
200 g sugar
350 g flour
30 g cocoa powder
3 g caraway
1 g bitter orange peel
1/2 t baking soda or baking powder
1 egg
3 T strong coffee

Mix all ingredients in the given order. If you have a cookie extruder (aka cookie press), extrude about 6-8 cm and form into a circle. Bake for about 10 min at 180 °C or until ready (Note that you really can’t tell if they’re done from the color!). Dust with powdered sugar.

The original recipe had the following spices:
1-1 1/2 t cloves
1-1 1/2 t cinnamon
1-1 1/2 t ginger
1-1 1/2 t star anise
1-1 1/2 t cardamom
1-1 1/2 t nutmeg
1-1 1/2 t bitter orange peel

(these teaspoons are not measuring teaspoons, but more like actual teaspoons!)

Verdict: In the stripped down version with only cocoa, caraway and some bitter lemon peel there you first notice the cocoa, then there is an aftertaste of caraway. I like caraway, so I was very pleased with the result. But my wife (who isn’t very fond of caraway) wasn’t particularily fond of them. Anyhow I think the 10:1 ratio of cocoa to caraway worked very fine. And the aroma brought back memories from the chocolate sauerkraut cake I made some time ago which was really delicious. With all the other spices present I wasn’t able to single out the carawa flavor, but it (probably) added to the overall complexity. I really recommend the recipe – even if you decide to omit caraway!

The avalanche of books in the food/science intersection this fall has been truly amazing. Three books in particular have showcased special restaurants: el Bulli, Alinea and The Fat Duck.

I own the first two and both – in different ways – are very satisfying. In line with previous releases from Ferran Adria, A day at el Bulli is extremely thorough at documenting exactly that – a complete day at the restaurant, with minute-by-minute photographs. It’s all very appealing – and you’ll be surprised by all the recipes that are included! The nice thing about this book is that it serves both as a coffee table inspirational book (for us geeks), but also as a great resource for those who are professionally involved.

The Alinea book is not as documenting in it’s style, but the level of detail and sophistication does not stand back from that of el Bulli. And the number of recipes included and details described is amazing. It has a very nice and useful index with main ingredients pointing you to the respective recipes, so if you want to cook with walnuts for instance, the index immediately tells me that there are eight recipes to chose from. And even though each single dish/presentation typically includes 3-5 separate recipes; for an amateur like me it’s perfectly fine to extract only one of the recipes from a presentation and turn that into a dish on it’s own.

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is still on my wish list – I expect to receive it in January and I’m truly looking forward to that. The reviews have been great and – well – there’s probably a lot more to say about a book that weighs more than than 5 kg, but I’ll leave it there!

Apart from these three books it’s hard to get around Under pressure by Thomas Keller, especially when considering that I got my immersion circulator the other day. It’s a book completely devoted to sous-vide cooking, written by one of the pioneers who elevated sous-vide from a convenient boil-in-bag method to the realms of gastronomy. Many (most?) of the recipes are not suited/intended for normal everyday cooking – at least if you depend on a regular grocery store like mine that doesn’t stock rabbit, quail and squab. But you’ll be surprised by how many recipes he includes for vegetable and fruit sous-vide!

Apart from these must-have books I’d check out the following books which would be recommended Christmas gifts for those interested in food or science or both. The title The Hungry Scientist Handbook immediately caught my attention (just like anything does that combines food and science). According to the description in includes more than 20 DIY projects ranging from edible origami to glowing lollipops and cryogenic martinis. O Boy! I can’t wait till I receive my copy

For those looking for a gift that combines science with Christmas I can warmly recommend the classic Can Reindeer Fly?: The Science of Christmas. In an entertaining and light hearted style topics such as the psychology of giving, the laws of shopping and the thermodynamics of turkey preparation are covered. And the most important question of all – how does Santa manage to deliver all those presents in one night? – is also answered in a proper scientific manner. I can only recommend this book – it’s the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who needs to be (or already is) convinced that science can be fun!

And then there are all the classics of course: On food and cooking, CookWise (now supplemented by BakeWise), The Science of cooking, Molecular gastronomy – exploring the science of flavor and Kitchen Mysteries – Revealing the science of cooking. You can find many more suggestions over at the static pages in the section molecular gastronomy.

If you’re looking for for a true gift-for-geeks you can buy a printed copy of “Texture – A hydrocolloid recipe collection” for only $4.95 + shipping from lulu.com, a print on demand company. It’s current sales rank is #104,208 so I don’t expect it to found under very many Christmas trees You can of course also download the pdf at no cost!