McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture

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By plant stress, he means things such as keeping them underwatered, which – the Chinese tiger mother approach – can, says McGee, produce better results than spoiling the plant. "Dry-farmed tomatoes are highly prized. The farmers give the plants water, then turn off the irrigation, and the plant ripens only the fruits it can manage to, and everything is more concentrated." 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 there was the world of small-scale home and restaurant cooking, traditional crafts that had never attracted much scientific attention. Nor did they really need any. Cooks had been developing their own body of practical knowledge for thousands of years, and had plenty of reliable recipes to work with.

Lccn 82042667 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_module_version 0.0.5 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA17266 Openlibrary_edition No wonder that milk captured the imaginations of many cultures. The ancient Indo-Europeans were cattle herders who moved out from the Caucasian steppes to settle vast areas of Eurasia around 3000 BCE; and milk and butter are prominent in the creation myths of their descendents, from India to Scandinavia. Peoples of the Mediterranean and Middle East relied on the oil of their olive tree rather than butter, but milk and cheese still figure in the Old Testament as symbols of abundance and creation. Stafford, Matthew, SF Weekly (November 24, 2004). On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the KitchenThe logic of this trend is obvious: it's a waste of its resources for the body to produce an enzyme when it's no longer needed; and once most mammals are weaned, they never encounter lactose in their food again. But if an adult without much lactase activity does ingest a substantial amount of milk, then the lactose passes through the small intestine and reaches the large intestine, where bacteria metabolize it, and in the process produce carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane: all discomforting gases. Sugar also draws water from the intestinal walls, and this causes a bloated feeling or diarrhea. The Goat The goat and sheep belong to the "ovicaprid" branch of the ruminant family, smaller animals that are especially at home in mountainous country. The goat, Capra hircus, comes from a denizen of the mountains and semidesert regions of central Asia, and was probably the first animal after the dog to be domesticated, between 8000 and 9000 BCE in present-day Iran and Iraq. It is the hardiest of the Eurasian dairy animals, and will browse just about any sort of vegetation, including woody scrub. Its omnivorous nature, small size, and good yield of distinctively flavored milk -- the highest of any dairy animal for its body weight -- have made it a versatile milk and meat animal in marginal agricultural areas. As science has gradually percolated into the world of cooking, cooking has been drawn into academic and industrial science. One effective and charming force behind this movement was Nicholas Kurti, a physicist and food lover at the University of Oxford, who lamented in 1969: "I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés." In 1992, at the age of 84, Nicholas nudged civilization along by organizing an International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy at Erice, Sicily, where for the first time professional cooks, basic scientists from universities, and food scientists from industry worked together to advance gastronomy, the making and appreciation of foods of the highest quality. The first fluid secreted by the mammary gland is colostrum, a creamy, yellow solution of concentrated fat, vitamins, and proteins, especially immunoglobulins and antibodies. After a few days, when the colostrum flow has ceased and the milk is saleable, the calf is put on a diet of reconstituted and soy milks, and the cow is milked two or three times daily to keep the secretory cells working at full capacity. It's a matter of overcoming fear. Anything that's frozen is not going to go bad. It's probably not going to be very pleasant, so the only way to answer that question is to take them out, try 'em. If you can tolerate them, drown them in a sauce and disguise the fact that they're cardboardy in texture, otherwise toss them."

First a few words about the remaining components. Milk is slightly acidic, with a pH between 6.5 and 6.7, and both acidity and salt concentrations strongly affect the behavior of the proteins, as we'll see. The fat globules carry colorless vitamin A and its yellow-orange precursors the carotenes, which are found in green feed and give milk and undyed butter whatever color they have. Breeds differ in the amount of carotene they convert into vitamin A; Guernsey and Jersey cows convert little and give especially golden milk, while at the other extreme sheep, goats, and water buffalo process nearly all of their carotene, so their milk and butter are nutritious but white. Riboflavin, which has a greenish color, can sometimes be seen in skim milk or in the watery translucent whey that drains from the curdled proteins of yogurt. The Buffalo The water buffalo is relatively unfamiliar in the West but the most important bovine in tropical Asia. Bubalus bubalis was domesticated as a draft animal in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE, then taken to the Indus civilizations of present-day Pakistan, and eventually through India and China. This tropical animal is sensitive to heat (it wallows in water to cool down), so it proved adaptable to milder climates. The Arabs brought buffalo to the Middle East around 700 CE, and in the Middle Ages they were introduced throughout Europe. The most notable vestige of that introduction is a population approaching 100,000 in the Campagna region south of Rome, which supplies the milk for true mozzarella cheese, mozzarella di bufala. Buffalo milk is much richer than cow's milk, so mozzarella and Indian milk dishes are very different when the traditional buffalo milk is replaced with cow's milk.Over the last few decades, however, the idealized portrait of milk has become more shaded. We've learned that the balance of nutrients in cow's milk doesn't meet the needs of human infants, that most adult humans on the planet can't digest the milk sugar called lactose, that the best route to calcium balance may not be massive milk intake. These complications help remind us that milk was designed to be a food for the young and rapidly growing calf, not for the young or mature human.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-03-04 23:01:03 Boxid IA1789708 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Col_number COL-609 Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier The Mediterranean world of Greece and Rome used economical olive oil rather than butter, but esteemed cheese. The Roman Pliny praised cheeses from distant provinces that are now parts of France and Switzerland. And indeed cheese making reached its zenith in continental and northern Europe, thanks to abundant pastureland ideal for cattle, and a temperate climate that allowed long, gradual fermentations. Both caseins and whey proteins are unusual among food proteins in being largely tolerant of heat. Where cooking coagulates the proteins in eggs and meat into solid masses, it does not coagulate the proteins in milk and cream -- unless the milk or cream has become acidic. Fresh milk and cream can be boiled down to a fraction of their volume without curdling. On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the inventive culinary movement known as "molecular gastronomy." Though other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques. The Whey Proteins Subtract the four caseins from the milk proteins, and the remainder, numbering in the dozens, are the whey proteins. Where the caseins are mainly nutritive, supplying amino acids and calcium for the calf, the whey proteins include defensive proteins, molecules that bind to and transport other nutrients, and enzymes. The most abundant one by far is lactoglobulin, whose biological function remains a mystery. It's a highly structured protein that is readily denatured by cooking. It unfolds at 172°F/78°C, when its sulfur atoms are exposed to the surrounding liquid and react with hydrogen ions to form hydrogen sulfide gas, whose powerful aroma contributes to the characteristic flavor of cooked milk (and many other animal foods).

Industrial and Scientific Innovations Beginning around 1830, industrialization transformed European and American dairying. The railroads made it possible to get fresh country milk to the cities, where rising urban populations and incomes fueled demand, and new laws regulated milk quality. Steam-powered farm machinery meant that cattle could be bred and raised for milk production alone, not for a compromise between milk and hauling, so milk production boomed, and more than ever was drunk fresh. With the invention of machines for milking, cream separation, and churning, dairying gradually moved out the hands of milkmaids and off the farms, which increasingly supplied milk to factories for mass production of cream, butter, and cheese. Lactose is one-fifth as sweet as table sugar, and only one-tenth as soluble in water (200 vs. 2,000 gm/l), so lactose crystals readily form in such products as condensed milk and ice cream and can give them a sandy texture.

McGee's scientific approach to cooking has been embraced and popularized by chefs and authors such as David Chang [23] and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. [24] Personal life [ edit ] The Milk Factory The mammary gland is an astonishing biological factory, with many different cells and structures working together to create, store, and dispense milk. Some components of milk come directly from the cow's blood and collect in the udder. The principal nutrients, however -- fats, sugar, and proteins -- are assembled by the gland's secretory cells, and then released into the udder. Dairying was unknown in the New World. On his second voyage in 1493, Columbus brought sheep, goats, and the first of the Spanish longhorn cattle that would proliferate in Mexico and Texas. McGee is a visiting scholar at Harvard University. [4] His book On Food and Cooking has won numerous awards and is used widely in food science courses at many universities. In the animal world, humans are exceptional for consuming milk of any kind after they have started eating solid food. And people who drink milk after infancy are the exception within the human species. The obstacle is the milk sugar lactose, which can't be absorbed and used by the body as is: it must first be broken down into its component sugars by digestive enzymes in the small intestine. The lactose-digesting enzyme, lactase, reaches its maximum levels in the human intestinal lining shortly after birth, and then slowly declines, with a steady minimum level commencing at between two and five years of age and continuing through adulthood.Milk is food for the newborn, and so dairy animals must give birth before they will produce significant quantities of milk. The mammary glands are activated by changes in the balance of hormones toward the end of pregnancy, and are stimulated to continue secreting milk by regular removal of milk from the gland. The optimum sequence for milk production is to breed the cow again 90 days after it calves, milk it for 10 months, and let it go dry for the two months before the next calving. In intensive operations, cows aren't allowed to waste energy on grazing in variable pastures; they're given hay or silage (whole corn or other plants, partly dried and then preserved by fermentation in airtight silos) in confined lots, and are milked only during their two or three most productive years. The combination of breeding and optimal feed formulation has led to per-animal yields of a hundred pounds or 15 gallons/58 liters per day, though the American average is about half that. Dairy breeds of sheep and goats give about one gallon per day. McGee, Harold J.; Long, Sharon R.; Briggs, Winslow R. (1984). "Why whip egg whites in copper bowls?". Nature. 308 (5960): 667–668. Bibcode: 1984Natur.308..667M. doi: 10.1038/308667a0. S2CID 4372579. Cressey, Daniel (2009). "Q&A with Harold McGee: The molecular master chef". Nature. 458 (7239): 707. doi: 10.1038/458707a. PMID 19360069. The Caseins The casein family includes four different kinds of proteins that gather together into microscopic family units called micelles. Each casein micelle contains a few thousand individual protein molecules, and measures about a ten-thousandth of a millimeter McGee, Harold (2013). "Chemistry: A festive ferment". Nature. 504 (7480): 372–374. Bibcode: 2013Natur.504..372M. doi: 10.1038/504372a. PMID 24352277.