Introduction
Cooking and Science, 1984 and This is the revised and expanded second
edition of a book that I first published in
1984, twenty long years ago. In 1984, canola
oil and the computer mouse and compact
discs were all novelties. So was the idea of
inviting cooks to explore the biological and
chemical insides of foods. It was a time when
a book like this really needed an introduction!
Twenty years ago the worlds of science
and cooking were neatly compartmentalized.
There were the basic sciences, physics and
chemistry and biology, delving deep into the
nature of matter and life. There was food
science, an applied science mainly concerned
with understanding the materials and
processes of industrial manufacturing. And