On Food and Cooking

films of liquid on the inside of the glass that seem to be in slow but constant movement up ...

When it does so, it disturbs the action of the membrane proteins. A high enough concentration of alcoh ...

various tissues into which it diffuses. We value it most for its influence on the central nervous system, where ...

from the digestive tract, the blood rapidly distributes it to all body fluids, and it readily diffuses into ...

Alcohol and the molecule to which it’s first metabolized, acetalde-hyde, disrupt many systems and organs in the b ...

perish, and wine unto them that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember h ...

gets to the small intestine and then into the blood. That portion is around 30% in men, but only 10% ...

blood alcohol levels. The carbon dioxide bubbles in sparkling wines and beer cause the same accelerated rise ...

few of these compounds, notably resveratrol and its relatives, inhibit an enzyme (cyclooxygenase) that’s ...

going or gone. Hyper-sensitivity to sound and light, for example, may be a leftover compensation for the gen ...

ingredients in a broad range of dishes, from savory soups and sauces and stews to sweet creams and cakes, souff ...

an asset for the cook, it can also be a liability. Alcohol has its own pungent, slightly medicinal qualities, ...

that microbes can “spoil” fruit juice and gruel into something both delicious and pleasantly inebriating. ...

heartwood solids are cell-wall molecules, cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. These are mostly insoluble, but ...

make them more pliable and easily bent into the final barrel shape. In Europe, the barrel interior ...

heated. In the charred American barrels used for whiskey, the carbonized surface acts something like an ...

the barrel as well as matured there after fermentation, and develop a distinctive barrel-fermented ...

Wine The juice of the grape is just one of the naturally sweet liquids with which our ancestors learned to ...

ripen with enough sugar that the yeasts’ alcohol production can suppress the growth of nearly all other micro ...

grapes and the first wines were red, but the Egyptians had a color mutant of the grape ...