Cooking for Geeks 第2版 料理の科学と実践レシピ

This is a truly unique book that explains the fundamentals of cooking—such as “how our sense of taste works,” “how fats, proteins, and sugars change with temperature,” and “how cooking tools work”—from a scientific perspective. Since it’s nearly 500 pages long, it took me several years to finish reading it, but it satisfied my curiosity while helping me improve my cooking skills—making it the perfect book for someone like me who loves both cooking and science. Since reading this book, cooking and eating have become part of my scientific practice. Specifically, here are some of the things I think about and notice on a daily basis: To ensure chicken breast stays juicy, you need to cook it at a temperature and for a duration that achieves pasteurization while preventing actin from organizing (the author recommends 68 degrees for 3 minutes). The reason you can safely eat a rare hamburger steak at the charcoal-grill restaurant Sawayaka is that they handle the ground meat processing in-house. The texture of marmalade comes from the gel formed as the pectin—which is released when the fruit peel and pith are boiled at high temperatures—cools. Sugar is necessary to prevent bacterial growth, but it also helps mellow the bitterness of the peel.