Cooking for Geeks (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

People edit see section history

• Jeff Potter: author of book
• Brian Wansink: Brian Wansink is a professor at Cornell University, where he studies the way we interact with food.
• Maureen Evans: Maureen Evans posts recipes on Twitter (@cookbook) limited to the length of a single tweet (140 characters).
• Lydia Walshin: Lydia Walshin is a professional food writer who also teaches adults how to cook.
• Adam Savage: Adam Savage is co-host of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, a popular science program.
• Buck Raper: Buck Raper is the manager of manufacturing and engineering for Dexter-Russell.
• Adam Ried: Adam Ried writes the Boston Globe Magazine’s cooking column and appears as on the PBS series America’s Test Kitchen.
• Jim Clarke: Jim Clarke is a wine writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Imbibe, and Foreign Policy, as well as on Forbes.com and StarChefs.com.
• Gail Vance Civille: Gail Vance Civille is a self-described “taste and smell geek” who has worked as a sensory professional.
• Virginia Utermohlen: Virginia Utermohlen is an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University.
• Xeni Jardin: Xeni Jardin is a coeditor of Boing Boing.
• Harold McGee: Harold McGee writes about the science of food and cooking. He is the author of On Food and Cooking.
• Doug Powell: Doug Powell is an associate professor at Kansas State University’s Department of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology.
• Michael Laiskonis: Michael Laiskonis is the executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin, one of only four three-star Michelin restaurants in New York City.
• Martin Lersch: Martin Lersch blogs about food and molecular gastronomy at http://blog. khymos.org.
• Jeff Varasano: Jef Varasano moved from New York to Atlanta, where a lack of New York–style pizza drove him to years of experimenting.
• David Lebovitz: David Lebovitz was a pastry chef at the renowned Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California and has written several well-received books.
• Hervé This: Hervé This is a researcher at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Paris.
• Linda Anctil: Linda Anctil is a private chef in Connecticut.
• Ann Barrett: Ann Barrett is a food engineer specializing in food textures.
• Douglas Baldwin: Douglas Baldwin is an applied mathematician and author of “A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking.”
• Dave Arnold: Dave Arnold teaches at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.
• Nathan Myhrvold: Nathan Myhrvold, formerly CTO of Microsoft, is among many things an avid cook.

Quotes edit see section history

• “One of the assumptions that many cooks make, especially when they're staring out, is that if it's published in a cookbook, it must be true. Well, not true.”

  Lydia Walshin

• “For me, once it stops being fun, I'm going to give it up, because I really do think that you should have a good time in the kitchen. I think you should make a mess in the kitchen. I think you should put some thing down the disposal if nobody really should eat them, and then you should go out for pizza, and it's all okay.”

  Lydia Walshin

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking (Scribner).

  Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers

• (http://www.fancyfastfood.com).

  Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers

• You can clean wooden cutting boards by wiping them down with white vinegar (the acidity kills most common bacteria). If your board smells (e.g., of garlic or fish), you can use lemon juice and salt to neutralize the odors.

  Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers

• Wolfram|Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com) is a great resource for converting standard measurements to metric.

  Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers

• Look where a wine comes from; that really tells you quite a bit. In 95% of cases, if it’s somewhere warm, the wine probably has fuller body. If it’s fuller-bodied, then it has lower acidity, because those two have an inverse relationship.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• picking the right ingredients for your dish is the biggest predictor of its success.

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

• Adding salt can neutralize bitterness, which is why a pinch of salt in a salad that contains bitter items such as dandelion greens helps balance the flavor. Sugar can also be used to mask bitterness.

  Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers

• As a general rule, you want your fats to be liquid at room temperature (good: olive oil, canola oil; bad: lard, shortening), and you want your carbs to not be white (that is, cut down on white rice, white flour, and sugar).

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• Salt (sodium chloride) makes foods taste better by selectively filtering out the taste of bitterness, resulting in the other primary tastes and flavors coming through more strongly. The addition of a small quantity of salt (not too much!) enhances other foods, bringing a “fullness” to foods that might otherwise have what is described as a “flat” flavor.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• A smaller plate leads you to eat 22% less than a larger plate. That only works with fresh food, because if all you’re doing is heating up frozen food, you’re going to eat all you can heat. Another one would be to serve off the counter. What we find is a person ends up being about two-sevenths as likely to go back for seconds or thirds or fourths if a dish is simply six or more feet away.

  Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• United States
• California
• America
• New York
• France
• Europe
• Paris
• Massachusetts
• Uk

First Sentence edit see section history

Errata edit see section history

Errata and corrections can be viewed at http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9780596805890

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jeff Potter (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 641.5024

Notes for Parents edit see section history

With parental supervision, this book is suitable for use with middle and high school students.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science › Agricultural Sciences › Food Science
• Books › Cooking, Food & Wine › Culinary Arts & Techniques
• Books › Professional & Technical › Professional Science › Agricultural Sciences › Food Sciences

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Cooking for Geeks: If you’re the curious type who asks why just as often as what­, “Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food” will show you how to use science when working in the kitchen. This website is a companion to the book, serving up photos, videos, recipes, and extended interviews.
• Jeff Potter: Author's personal website