Customer Reviews
Many anecdotes, little culinary knowledge - By: Tomasz Wegrzanowski, 05 May 2008 
I bought this book hoping to learn some hard science behind cooking & I'm very disappointed. The book consists mostly of anecdotes of what scientists from Dijon found in one kind of wine/cheese/meat or another but hardly any of this can be extrapolated to everyday cooking & it doesn't give any sort of a big picture view on food - just a lot of details.
The book also contains a few interesting ideas, especiallly on non-traditional emulsions/foams/suspensions/gels - in particular chapter 97 "Everything Chocolate" is very interesting.
Overalll I'd suggest buying another book. It's pleasant to read but amount of useful or enlightening content is quite low.
Fascinating and inspiring - By: Bluebell, 12 Mar 2008 
This is very interesting book covering a wide range of topics on the subject of flavour, taste & smell perception as well as the application of basic science to food & drink technology. I was particularly interested in the recent research into the physiology of taste perception, which until recently was the poor cousin of that of the sense of smell. There is a fair bit of chemistry, biochemistry & physics to take in to get full value from the book so I think this book would appeal most to those not only interested in food & cooking but also with some scientific knowledge. The last section of the book focuses on how the physico-chemical properties of ingredients like eggs or fats can be manipulated into creating novel recipes for foods. One can see where the likes of the innovative chef Heston Blumenthal got his inspiration.
A real page turner - By: Mr. Nicholas Tulett, 03 Mar 2008 Strangely enough for a professional scientist, This' book contains an extraordinary number of basic temperature conversion mistakes (and I'm not talking a few degrees here & there, more like 100C in some cases).
That aside, the only real problem I've found is that I can't put the book down for long enough to actuallly try to cook something.
WHY? - By: D. LINDSAY, 30 Dec 2007 A must for any chef who always has the question WHY? in their mind & some of the answers are in this book the others you'll have to figure out for your self.
