Science in the Kitchen by Peter Barham

We all have heard of molecular cuisine or simply a chemical change - such as yeast or gluten mesh - linked to work in the kitchen. In this book a scientist himself, Peter Barham, physicist at the University of Bristol, enters in the food word in order to explain some physical-chemical mechanisms of yeast or baking - from the Maillard reaction to the "magic" leavening - providing knowledge that not everyone has but which are easily (so says the author) learnable. Certainly this is not a boring school textbook: to make the topic less complex the author after the first theoretical chapters, introduces a series of interesting recipes that touch many raw materials, from meat to fish, from bread to pasta, and the souffle cakes. In this central part of "Science in the Kitchen", Peter Barham try to unravel the science behind the different methods of cooking, bringing specific recipe demonstration, in each chapter, the main purpose of the recipes, there are suggestions for variations introduced to stimulate the reader to reinvent. Finally, anyone who has a latent tendency towards scientific experiments can try (we list it, but we do not assume the responsibility) to play the "do-it-yourself experiments" reported by the author. "Science in the Kitchen" Bollati Boringhieri publisher Italian Language 331 pages 19 euros