Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism by Hervé This

Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism Reviews

• 
  Darren

  This is the culinary equivalent of an autopsy and a detailed scan of the body rolled into one.
  
  Here the author, in a surprisingly light-hearted, jargon-free manner for such a technically-advanced book, manages to get the reader to start questioning everything about food, even if they don't know it so far. At the heart it is almost deeply psychological. Why do we eat? Why do we cook how we cook? Why do we cook what we cook? The answers might sound superficially simple yet do we really, truly know or understand the answers? Are the answers really so simple either? Sure, there can be technical reasons for some, there can be sociological reasons for others and without a doubt somethings can strain the definition of rationality.
  
  Within the pages of this relatively-slim book the author, who is a renowned chemist and broadcaster, uses his laboratory - said to be the first of its kind to be devoted to molecular gastronomy - to great effect, to simply (!) consider the preparation of six bistro favourites. Boiled egg with mayonnaise, simple consomme, leg of lamb with green beans, steak with French fries, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate mousse are put under the culinary microscope, the exact chemical properties that tickle our senses and stimulate our appetites are isolated. Consideration is made to the 'invisible' connection between brain and stomach, an examination of why some things appeal more than others and much more besides.
  
  The book can be as complex as you like. Clearly there is a lot of scientific language, theory and descriptive writing. The casual, less-informed reader may find it hard going yet hopefully they can in any case get a sufficient overview to whet their appetite, if you pardon the pun, that might encourage them to investigate the subject in greater depth. That said, the text is structured to be accessible unlike many academic books of a similar statue. Yet in many ways the book is unstructured, charmingly so. Within the various chapters you get the feeling of a slightly absently-minded professor, giving out a lot of great information and haphazardly changing the subject, going off on a tangent and then returning back to the subject without a second thought. One can be quite forgiving to this approach, particularly when you consider the quality and depth of the information on offer. It certainly does encourage page-by-page reading rather than dropping in and out.
  
  The publisher too deserves a special credit for not putting a high price on this clearly academic, groundbreaking book. Lovers of food and cooking can equally and easily share in the book's knowledge at their level to further perfect their art. Those of a more scientific bent will then get, based on the typical price of academic books, a damn good bargain too.
  
  For those who have heard the term 'molecular gastronomy' but don't really know what it entails, this is a highly recommended book that will serve as a great starter to a relatively new subject. For everyone else it is is just highly recommended.
  
  Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism, written by Hervé This and published by Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231144674, 152 pages. Typical price: GBP9. YYYY.
  
  
  // This review appeared in YUM.fi and is reproduced here in full with permission of YUM.fi. YUM.fi celebrates the worldwide diversity of food and drink, as presented through the humble book. Whether you call it a cookery book, cook book, recipe book or something else (in the language of your choice) YUM will provide you with news and reviews of the latest books on the marketplace. //
• 
  Stephen

  I bought this book on the way to a monastery where I made a retreat but I didn't begin reading it there. Instead, I read the first two chapters in the waiting room outside a surgery where my wife was the patient. The clinicality of a hospital seemed a perfect fit with the writing of a physical chemist challenging centuries of culinary tradition and myth. Even the jacket photo shows Professeur This in a lab wearing a lab coat.
  
  Over several years, I had crept toward being ready to read This by first reading Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The science and lore of the kitchen, New York: Scribner, 1984; Russ Parsons, How to Read a French Fry: and Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001; Robert L. Wolke, What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen science explained, New York: W.W. Norton, 2002' and Robert L. Wolke, What Einstein Told His Cook 2: Further adventures in kitchen science, New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
  
  Still, the thought that the author would suddenly whip out a recipe using sodium alginate made me wary. I was en garde for any suggestion that meat should be powdered or that food should be bathed in a circulating water bath and called sous vide.
  
  Instead, This organizes his little book around a meal -- two appetizers, two mains with sides, and two desserts -- using each to illustrate a point (or many points) about what is happening at an invisible level when we manipulate edible ingredients before serving them.
  
  While I will never go to the soulless extremes of wasabi sorbet, nor foie gras mousse, nor caviar in white chocolate, I am intrigued by what science (chemistry and physics, mostly) have to inform the practitioner about the art and craft of cooking.
  
  This left me with a sentence that has grown like a koan in my thinking and won't be dislodged: "It is better to understand what one is doing and then to decide, in perfect liberty, what one wishes to do." (p. 92) I'll be chewing on this thought for a very long time.
  
  
• 
  kirk

  Having been inspired by This' earlier book, *Molecular Gastronomy*, I was excited to read this. Both books give me a hankering to get into the kitchen and play around. But then, that's not a hard thing to do. Much of the technical material covered here has already been covered in the other work; still, it's nice to be reminded the ways that challenging traditional cooking methods can yield surprising delights.
  
  One of the main goals of the author seems to correct for his developing reputation as a technician, and to prove that a warm human heart beats beneath his lab coat. To that end, I'm convinced. He seems like a nice enough fellow. I don't have any reason to doubt that he values generosity as a virtue in the kitchen. I'm glad that he is nice. That said, his pronouncements about love and its relationship to cooking seem overstated. One is led to imagine that Mr. This worries about the dangerousness of molecular gastronomy, and wants to make sure that A) he gets credit for inventing this new science of food, and B) it's used for only noble causes.
  
  I like the idea of a book that meditatively takes us through the invention of a single meal. In the case of this book, I wish he had applied the rigor displayed in his culinary method to the work of his philosophical ponderings. Or that he had pared this material down to a single chapter that might be included in a different book . . . preferably that presents more of the technical challenges that he so deeply understands.
  
  
• 
  Alex

  Enjoyable and informative. I appreciated its brevity and menu-like structure - it was just enough information on basics of the art and science of cooking without becoming overwhelming. I shall undoubtedly be using this book as my reference in the future.
  
  Among things I found bothersome were the interview sections dedicated to Mr This' career and role as a patriarch of molecular gastronomy, to be more specific the positioning of said sections, occasionally forcefully inserted in the middle of a chapter, proved to be a distraction. Another criticism concerns the photographs of dishes. Black and white pictures don't look inspiring or appetising, so in a way this book would be better off without any.
  
  Other than that, nice read, it would make a good present for an inquisitive foodie.
• 
  Ingrid Veilleux

  This is the first book that I have read by Hervé This and I found it to be a good starting point for learning what molecular gastronomy is. He takes the most simple of ingredients and everyday recipes and problematizes them. He delights in making the reader take a new look at something we have seen (or eaten) a thousand times but have never wondered why the food comes out just so.
  
  A new concept for me in this book was the goal of repeatability. Keep track of what works and what doesn't so that it takes the guess work out of cooking. Higher probability of success in the kitchen! Obvious to some perhaps, but I am not in the habit of keeping detailed notes of my cooking 'experiments'!
  
  
• 
  Nicholas

  Highly elucidating as to what molecular gastromony is--the introduction of science to cooking. It didn't go into the equipment used, such as <<>>; or the techniques, such as <<>>; and the examples were a bit vague. Highly readable, entertaining, knowledgeable, highly reccommended to anyone interested in food science or modernist cuisine.
• 
  Elizabeth

  I don't really know what culinary constructivism is, but I think I can make a guess. Getting hungry now.
• 
  Whitney

  Molecular gastronomy gave me the motivation to create my own culinary masterpieces in the kitchen!
• 
  Steve Clark

  Hardcover