Colossal cookbook is not to all tastes
Source: Agencies |
March 24, 2011, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A new widely anticipated six-volume cookbook with 1,500 recipes and a US$625 price tag has won rave reviews but also a dose of skepticism.
Many critics have praised "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking" by Nathan Myhrvold, with its scientific principals and space-age gastronomic tools, as the most important culinary publication in history.
But others wondered whether the 18 kilogram, 2,400-plus tome needlessly complicates the fairly basic concept of cooking and eating.
In its review the New York Times said it "was left wondering how a book could be mind-crushingly boring, eye-bulgingly riveting, edifying, infuriating, frustrating, fascinating, all in the same moment."
Myhrvold, a multimillionaire and one-time technology officer for Microsoft, shrugged off critics at an event this week to promote the book. "Wine is not grape juice, and cheese is not cream," he said, referring to the history and tradition of cultivating and reformulating core ingredients into foods now deemed staples.
Myhrvold left Microsoft Research in 1999 to explore his lifelong interest in cooking and food science. He spent about five years working with co-authors Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, along with a team of 36 cooks, editors, photographers and technicians on the cookbook, which sold out its first printing before it could even be shipped.
Tim Zagat, co-founder of the Zagat guidebook empire, described the book as "the most amazing cookbook I've ever seen in my life."
Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart agreed.
But an executive chef from one of Manhattan's most renowned restaurants said the style of cooking espoused in the book seems to move the diner away, in both time and usage, from the food and ingredients, instead of closer.
Many critics have praised "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking" by Nathan Myhrvold, with its scientific principals and space-age gastronomic tools, as the most important culinary publication in history.
But others wondered whether the 18 kilogram, 2,400-plus tome needlessly complicates the fairly basic concept of cooking and eating.
In its review the New York Times said it "was left wondering how a book could be mind-crushingly boring, eye-bulgingly riveting, edifying, infuriating, frustrating, fascinating, all in the same moment."
Myhrvold, a multimillionaire and one-time technology officer for Microsoft, shrugged off critics at an event this week to promote the book. "Wine is not grape juice, and cheese is not cream," he said, referring to the history and tradition of cultivating and reformulating core ingredients into foods now deemed staples.
Myhrvold left Microsoft Research in 1999 to explore his lifelong interest in cooking and food science. He spent about five years working with co-authors Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, along with a team of 36 cooks, editors, photographers and technicians on the cookbook, which sold out its first printing before it could even be shipped.
Tim Zagat, co-founder of the Zagat guidebook empire, described the book as "the most amazing cookbook I've ever seen in my life."
Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart agreed.
But an executive chef from one of Manhattan's most renowned restaurants said the style of cooking espoused in the book seems to move the diner away, in both time and usage, from the food and ingredients, instead of closer.
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