It’s an incredible task to write an encyclopedia, but Harold
McGee carries it off. He has written a summary of what the world knows (well, what the West knows; he only had 684 pages) about the science of food. Each kind of food — plant and animal — is discussed, its history, and all the ways of cooking and brewing that we use. McGee makes complexities comprehensible: he uses technical terms and he explains them simply and lightly. He makes accessible the knowledge about food that our culture has gained in the last several millennia. Cooks cannot stop reading this book; they mutter, red-eyed, “Just one more page!”
