What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "OF OUR FIVE CLASSICALLY recognized senses-touch, hearing, vision, smell, and taste-only the last two are purely chemical in nature, that is, they can detect actual..." (more)
Key Phrases: glass measurer, granulated table salt, magnetic rack, United States, Salt Sense, Nutrition Facts (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Why do recipes call for unsalted butter--and salt? What is a microwave, actually? Are smoked foods raw or cooked? Robert L. Wolke's enlightening and entertaining What Einstein Told His Cook offers answers to these and 127 other questions about everyday kitchen phenomena. Using humor (dubious puns included), Wolke, a bona fide chemistry professor and syndicated Washington Post columnist, has found a way to make his explanations clear and accessible to all: in short, fun. For example, to a query about why cookbooks advise against inserting meat thermometers so that they touch a bone, Wolke says, "I hate warnings without explanations, don't you? Whenever I see an 'open other end' warning on a box, I open the wrong end just to see what will happen. I'm still alive." But he always finally gets down to brass tacks: as most heat transfer in meat is due to its water content, areas around bone remain relatively cool and thus unreliable for gauging overall meat temperature.

Organized into basic categories like "Sweet Talk" (questions involving sugar), "Fire and Ice" (we learn why water boils and freezers burn, among other things), and "Tools and Technology" (the best kind of frying pan, for example), the book also provides illustrative recipes like Black Raspberry Coffee Cake (to demonstrate how metrics work in recipes) and Bob's Mahogany Game Hens (showing what brining can do). With technical illustrations, tips, and more, the book offers abundant evidence that learning the whys and hows of cooking can help us enjoy the culinary process almost as much as its results. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly

Wolke, longtime professor of chemistry and author of the Washington Post column Food 101, turns his hand to a Cecil Adams style compendium of questions and answers on food chemistry. Is there really a difference between supermarket and sea salt? How is sugar made? Should cooks avoid aluminum pans? Interspersed throughout Wolke's accessible and humorous answers to these and other mysteries are recipes demonstrating scientific principles. There is gravy that avoids lumps and grease; Portuguese Poached Meringue that demonstrates cream of tartar at work; and juicy Salt-Seared Burgers. Wolke is good at demystifying advertisers' half-truths, showing, for example, that sea salt is not necessarily better than regular salt for those watching sodium intake. While the book isn't encyclopedic, Wolke's topics run the gamut: one chapter tackles Those Mysterious Microwaves; elsewhere readers learn about the burning of alcohol and are privy to a rant on the U.S. measuring system. Sometimes the tone is hokey (The green color [in potatoes] is Mother Nature's Mr. Yuk sticker, warning us of poison) and parenthetical Techspeak explanations may seem condescending to those who remember high school science. However, Wolke tells it like it is. What does clarifying butter do, chemically? Answer: gets rid of everything but that delicious, artery-clogging, highly saturated butterfat. With its zest for the truth, this book will help cooks learn how to make more intelligent choices.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1 edition (May 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393011836
• ISBN-13: 978-0393011838
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #52,112 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

222 of 228 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Allows one to use plastic spoons for caviar, etc., November 6, 2002

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This is a most delightful book, full of kitchen wisdom and chemistry, good and bad puns, and many, many clever witticisms. It is a flat out pleasure to read, but what really makes it such an outstanding piece of work, and a book every kitchen should have, is that it is so full of information, from why and how corn syrup ends up in sodas to why and how to wash your mushrooms--and yes, they are indeed grown in manure, but not to worry, as Wolke explains on pages 286-288 in a little essay entitled, "You Can't Wash Your Car with a Wet Mushroom." (I believe that.) This is the kind of book you'll find yourself reading from cover to cover instead of peeling the potatoes. Speaking of which, Wolke advises that there is a very slight problem with green potatoes, but that reports of their poisonous nature are greatly exaggerated. (See pages 117-120 for the true scoop.)

I have just one problem: nowhere does Wolke say how many sesame seeds are in a teaspoon. However, inspired by Wolke's labor-intensive lime squeezing experiment on pages 281-284, I was able to work it out myself. The answer is 840. I found this by counting the number in a half teaspoon and multiplying by two, genius that I am. (Alas, this was before I realized that I could have counted the number in a quarter teaspoon and multiplied by four.) Which reminds me of the joke about a guy on a train counting cows in a field. When asked how he could do this he explained that he counted their legs and divided by four.

Now you may think this was an idle exercise and wonder if I am not slyly making fun of Wolke's book. Au Cointreau! What I learned by counting sesame seeds exemplifies one of the lessons in the book, namely how hard it is to measure anything exactly. On page 294 Wolke asks, "Have you noticed how surface tension makes the liquid bulge up above the rim of the measuring spoon? How accurate can that be?" Well, I have, and I want to tell you getting a straight line of sesame seeds across the top of that measuring spoon was no piece of cake either!

There are nine chapters and a really excellent index, suggestions for further reading and a brief glossary. There are some excellent recipes by Wolke's wife, Marlene Parrish. I performed a "thought experiment" on several of them and found that my mouth was watering. One of them, how to make turkey or chicken gravy on page 156 is almost exactly the way I make it. (Smile.) Parrish uses the roasting pan, transferring it to the stove top burners after removing the bird, and then deglazes the pan more or less in the French style. I must note that on the previous page Wolke himself does not recommend this technique finding it "hard to straddle two burners" not to mention "one big cleanup job after dinner."

Which makes me wonder who makes the gravy in their household--or, better yet, who does the dishes!

The chapters begin with sugar, "Sweet Talk" and end with "Tools and Technology." Wolke gives us a full mouthful on the differences between cane and beet sugar, between brown and white sugar, between cocoa and chocolate, and makes me feel good about not being crazy about white chocolate. He separates the sea salt from the rock salt; he explains what MSG is and where it comes from; how home water filters works; why "the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat" is actually true, and of course how to open a champagne bottle and clarify butter... Ghee, I'm exhausted!

One of my favorite explanations is why beef in the supermarket looks bright pink on the outside and brown on the inside. (See pages 127-128, and, no, they don't spray it with dye, which is what I always thought.) I also liked it when Wolke got down and dirty and tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk, and after some heavy-duty "Techspeak" came to the conclusion that you can't; that frying an egg on the sidewalk is an urban legend. (But try the roof of your Arizona "sun-baked, dark blue, 1994 Ford Taurus" which "measured 178 degrees F, more than hot enough to coagulate both white and yolk.") (p. 193)

The icing on the cake for me (if you will) was Wolke's explanation of "Why Crackers Are Holey" beginning on page 307. What his explanation amounts to is a guide on how to make crackers, which is something I've been stumbling around in the kitchen, trying to do off and on for ages. Two key factors that I was unaware of: One, the oven has to be very, very hot ("saltines are baked at 650 to 700 degrees F."; matzos at "800 to 900 degrees F.") and Two, crackers need holes to let the air out! And now to find an oven that gets that hot...

Here are a couple of witticisms: On page 305 Wolke is talking about ovens that use light to cook food, and "the promotional statements...[that sound] like pseudoscientific hype:" They "harness the power of light." They cook "with the speed of light" and "from the inside out." He comments: "Light does indeed travel, appropriately enough, at the speed of light, but it doesn't penetrate most solids very far. Try reading this page through a steak."

Or, "The makers of matzos, the unleavened flatbread of the Jewish Passover, seem to have gone hog wild (you should excuse the expression) on perforations. Matzos are much hole-ier than secular crackers." (p. 307)

Bottom line: fascinating and fun to read.

74 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kitchen Chemistry, June 22, 2002

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

It turns out that you can view cooking as a kind of chemistry mixed with biology, physics and (in the case of some French pastries, engineering.) It's no accident that the author Wolke is a retired professor of chemistry. Chemistry and cooking really do go together. After all, cooking creates chemical and physical changes in foods.

So what if you are NOT a fan of sciences? Will this book bore your or excite you? Well, I think most anyone could enjoy this book because there are quite a few bits of information that make for fascinating reading. And some of it is helpful for healthful cooking. For example, the green on potatoes is a chemical called solanine and forms in sunlight under the skin of the tuber. This is an alkyloid that's toxic, so keep your potatoes away from light and toss those green meanies.

The section on methods of cooking; pressure cooking, microwave, and induction cooking ranges was useful. These are common methods of cooking but how many of us really get an explanation of what's happening?

If you are tutoring your kids in science at home, or teaching them to cook, this book is invaluable. If you are curious about the "why" of cooking, this book is for you.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Answers to questions I didn't even know I had..., June 4, 2002

By	Kristen (Detroit, MI USA) - See all my reviews

Excellent writing! I used to love the sciences growing up but now I've entered the "real world" complete with a sit-all-day-looking-at-a-computer-screen job. Because of that, I have recently found cooking (something to invigorate my mind and senses in the evening). Wolke's book is the perfect combination of both cooking and science, with just the right amount of humor and sarcasm. I just finished it last night and am already online to buy his other works. Happy reading!