Kitchen Chemistry [Paperback]

Ted Lister (Author), Heston Blumenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0854043896 | ISBN-13: 978-0854043897 | Edition: 1

The chemistry of food and cooking is just one example of the many roles chemistry plays in our everyday lives. This topic provides an exciting context for some familiar chemistry and a way to engage students with the subject. Kitchen Chemistry contains a wide variety of activities, from class practicals and demonstrations to reading comprehension and paper-based exercises. Each activity deals with an aspect of the chemistry of food and/or cooking. The material is suitable for a wide range of ages, from primary to post-16, and helps reinforce the idea that everything is made of chemicals and that there is no difference between 'man-made' and 'natural' chemicals.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Introduction by Heston Blumenthal, Chef and proprietor of The Fat Duck ...

"One of the most exciting things that has happened at my restaurant, The Fat Duck, recently is the Royal Society of Chemistry producing this resource for schools - Kitchen chemistry. It is based on taking a scientific approach to cooking - an activity that has traditionally been regarded as an art, rather than a science. Topics range from the simple (what is the role of salt in cooking vegetables?) to the complex (separating volatile flavour components in foods by gas chromatography mass spectrometry), to the 'just for fun' (breaking the world record for ice cream making by using liquid nitrogen as a coolant). What the RSC has done is to provide flexible material that teachers can 'dip into' that relates the chemistry that goes on in the home or restaurant kitchen to that which students learn about in the school curriculum.

Kitchen chemistry makes chemistry more accessible because it brings together scientific theory and everyday practicality. After all, we all know something about cooking even though we may not do it very often, and children are no different. When I left school I had no scientific background whatsoever. I have taught myself slowly and with much difficulty, so this new initiative is music to my ears. I just wish it had happened a few years earlier."

Heston Blumenthal, Chef and proprietor of The Fat Duck, from the introduction to Kitchen Chemistry

From the reviews ...

"Snail porridge and bacon and egg ice cream might not sound like the makings of a normal chemistry class, but the creator of such dishes, Heston Blumenthal, is planning to use his unique brand of molecular gastronomy to get children interested in chemistry.

Mr Blumenthal, whose Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, was named the best in the world last week, has put together a series of lesson plans and resources for teachers who want to add some spice to their chemistry lessons.

The lessons look at how you find common chemistry experiments, of levels suitable for seven to 18-year-olds, in the kitchen.

The experiments including examining the difference between between taste and smell, between sweet and sour flavours and how the cooking processes affect the molecules in food.

Website containing video clips of Mr Blumenthal cooking, talking about how he came up with the idea of molecular gastronomy and chatting to scientists about whether salt in boiling water changes the cooking process of vegetables.

Ted Lister, who wrote the materials on behalf of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), which produced the materials, said: "The key is familiar chemistry in a non-laboratory context.

"In one session he cooks chocolat coulant - which translates to running chocolate, a dessert. It's a pudding with a chocolate and cream cheese filling. You'd think they don't go together, but his knack is to find unlikely things that do go together like garlic and coffee. Underlying this is the theory or molecular gastronomy - examining flavour on a molecular level.

"Heston looks at the flavour component of a number of foods. If they have a significant number of molecules in common, they work better together. This is where he gets his odd combinations together. He doesn't work on a try it and see basis, it's molecular theory."

Polly Curtis, The Guardian, UK, April 2005

 

From the reviews ... Heston Blumenthal's restaurant, The Fat Duck, was named best retaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine:

"For years Britain has been cast as the poor relation when it comes to food, but last night Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant the Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire was crowned the best in the world.

A panel of 600 international chefs and critics voted for the man whose dishes sound like a mistake — smoked bacon and egg ice cream or green tea and lime mousse dipped in liquid nitrogen."

The Times, UK, April 2005

"There is no doubt Heston Blumenthal is the most original and remarkable chef this country has ever produced. The Fat Duck, the pioneering British restaurant that introduced the world to delicacies such as sardine on toast sorbet and bacon and egg ice cream, has been declared the world’s best place to eat.

Chef Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant in the Berkshire village of Bray topped a list of the world’s 50 best restaurants which was unveiled in London last night."

The Guardian, UK, April 2005

Product Details

• Paperback: 142 pages
• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry; 1 edition (July 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0854043896
• ISBN-13: 978-0854043897
• Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #538,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Potential, not only unrealized, but deadened!, February 15, 2011

By 

Sharp Geek in a dulling world! Change the rules! - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kitchen Chemistry (Paperback)

This is a HORRENDOUSLY-produced ( many paragraphs are grey-on-grey JPEGs!! ) item,
and finally I understand why being a teacher stuck in an institution is hopeless:
no matter what one's intention,
one's institution/policies/procedures/means WON'T ALLOW intelligence to continue,
so long as instituted "education" has anything to do with it.
( search Amazon for John Taylor Gatto, a NY-State award-winning teacher, for the real fundamental of "education",
which was put in place by the coal industry...
I wonder WHY they might want "educated" populations?? connect the dots. )

Insistently using "dm^3" notation instead of "litre" ( and sometimes getting it wrong, using -3 instead of 3 ),
lots of words asserting the institutionality of the text, but little clarity in dealing directly with the meaning:
it's hopeless.

Anyone who reads this is very likely to end up with a couple of bits of info they didn't have before, but duller, mentally,
because of how bad this production is.

As for the DVD,...
WHAT DVD?

Not included...

Perhaps some downloads, somewhere, make the DVD redundant,
and perhaps seeing the videos of Heston Blumenthal are so wonderfully enthusiizeing, that it's all great,
but this book DESPERATELY needs to be re-done,
edited by someone who's worked through "Stein on Writing" &
"Corps Business: the 30 MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES of the US Marines"
( the latter partly for the principle of Give People the WHAT & the WHY,
then get the hell out of their hair & let 'em learn/do it their OWN way,
and for the whole attitude of growing OTHERs' learning,
instead of snuffing it out with institutionality ),
re-written in 2 parts ( 1 part for those who don't do chemistry-equasions & titrations, for the younger kids,
then 1 part for the advanceder stuffs, see ),
with clear typesetting,
diagrams,
clear links to online content,
and no brain-deadening institutional-mentality-bunk.

John Taylor Gatto's right: intelligence isn't permitted to survive our "education",
and with the POTENTIAL this work has,
this could *become* something worth investing in,
but, dear god, get, instead, these 4:

On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee
This covers WHY kitchen-magic/cooking happens, what's going on
( which is what "kitchen chemistry" shoulda got into us ).

Cooking, by James Peterson
the fundamentals of ( Western/Eurocentric ) cooking
( the basic cooking methods, including roast, braise, grill, barbecue, saute, etc,
the basic recipes, on which more complex dishes are based,
how to combine dishes into meals, etc
being vegetarian, most of this book isn't *directly* useful for me,
but instead of recommending his Sauces, Essentials of Cooking, Baking, etc, books,
this brings it all together:
simply leave unused the meat-technique, if that is one's want, as I do. )

Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques
technical competence/excellence,
so one can then concentrate on the ingredients' potential,
instead of being frustrated by poor technique's sabotage of one.
I can't recommend this book enough!

Heaven's Banquet - Vegetarian Cooking for Lifelong Health the Ayurveda Way by Miriam Kasin Hospodar
& why some foods help one's own health, but harm another's health:
what Pattern-of-foods helps one, & why!

THESE can get people learning!

PS: I found the videos on the rsc.org site, finally,
and they do make my paid purchase-price worth something,
but the *book* must be redone to be worth anything!

If YOU find those videos,
the versions you want are the MPEG versions,
at roughly 35MB/each.

The other versions are unwatchable in quality & cropped, to boot.

HTH!

3.0 out of 5 stars not the information in the format that I was hoping for, December 25, 2010

By 

D "Sharp" (Australia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kitchen Chemistry (Paperback)

This book and the DVD support is great for the purpose that is intended, and that is for teaching interested students. I didn't investigate enough before purchase so I was a little disapointed.
Heston is smart and presents well but I was hoping for more volume of technical information, my fault.
Quality of the information for the intended audience may deserve a higher rating.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Basic Chemistry book, July 30, 2010

By 

Frank Nelson (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kitchen Chemistry (Paperback)

I bought this book because it is written in part by Heston Blumenthal. I have most of his other works and I really enjoy the way he walks through the creation of a dish. It is sort of like a more advanced, no worry about being pretentious, version of Cook's Illustrated. I really enjoy Cook's Illustrated but at times they seem limited by worrying about being pretentious. With Heston Blumenthal's lists of equipment and ingredients in various books, he is clearly not worried about this. He wants to have fun and make the best dish he can.