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  • Culinary Reactions

  • The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking
  • Written by: Simon Quellen Field
  • Narrated by: Sean Pratt
  • Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (8 ratings)

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Culinary Reactions

Written by: Simon Quellen Field
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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Publisher's Summary

When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful microbes. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses.

In Culinary Reactions, author Simon Quellen Field explores the chemistry behind the recipes you follow every day. How does altering the ratio of flour, sugar, yeast, salt, butter, and water affect how high bread rises? Why is whipped cream made with nitrous oxide rather than the more common carbon dioxide? And why does Hollandaise sauce fall for "clarified" butter? This easy-to-follow primer even includes recipes to demonstrate the concepts being discussed, including Whipped Creamsicle Topping (a foam), Cherry Dream Cheese (a protein gel), and Lemonade with Chameleon Eggs (an acid indicator). It even shows you how to extract DNA from a Halloween pumpkin. You'll never look at your graduated cylinders, Bunsen burners, and beakers the same way again.

©2012 Simon Quellen Field (P)2017 Tantor

What the critics say

“With information advanced enough to interest the well-seasoned, hard-boiled home cook, the information in this book is written in such a friendly and approachable manner that even beginner kitchen-chemists will be delighted to learn from it." ( San Francisco Book Review)

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casual conversation about complex processes

It is a shorter read and enjoyable despite the complex subject matter. I got many good points that I have been able to apply to my cooking process. Give me A good 'why' to many of my regular cooking products that I learnt from traditions.

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