Slashdot Mirror
Ex-Microsoft CTO Writes $625 Cookbook
carusoj writes "Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's first CTO, made his mark in the tech world. Now he's cemented his place in the world of cooking and food science with the publication of a groundbreaking six-volume, 2,438-page cookbook. Some of the techniques in Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine are intimidating, to put it mildly, calling for such daunting ingredients as liquid nitrogen and equipment such as centrifuges and rotor-stator homogenizers. But Myhrvold and his co-authors insist that the majority of recipes can be made in a conventional home kitchen — with a few recommended, inexpensive extras such as a digital gram scale and water bath for sous vide cooking." Dear Bosses: When you see the centrifuge on my March expense report, please note that this is a legitmate business expense. If you're still curious, we ran a story a couple years ago on Nathan's Kitchen Lab.
What the article didn't tell us is that after the first rejection of the manuscript by the publisher, Myhrvold was overheard in his office screaming, "F*****g Wolfgang Puck is a f*****g pussy. I'm going to f*****g bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f*****g kill Food Network!" A few chairs were seen outside in the parking lot later that afternoon as well,. . .
Iran: "We are not using these centrifuges to enrich uranium. We are just trying out some recipes in this cookbook."
International Atomic Energy Agency Inspector: "Well, I do have to admit that the concentrated flavor molecules in this powerfully aromatic liquid layer is ideal for cooking."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
first he has to sucker the world+dog into believing it's something they must have and no other cookbook is useful because the recipes are incompatible. Using exotic equipment is a good start at making it incompatible. It'll cost a few billion in marketing to get the drones to believe they must have it and nothing else will work.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
There's no mystery here. That's just how it's always been done, and for very good reason: To measure a volume, all you need is a cup with a line drawn on it. Meaduring weight or mass with the same precision requires a scale. Since humans generally prepare food at SATP, these are pretty reliable metrics.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Traditional cooking is more of an art than a science. It's a lot easier to eyeball volume than it is weight. I rarely cook from recipes, but when I do I rarely ever use measuring devices. I know what a cup of liquid or a teaspoon or tablespoon of this or that looks like. A pinch or a dash is a perfectly fine measurement for cooking. In other words, it just makes sense.
This new style of chemical cooking is exactly that, chemistry, and things need to be very precise to get the wanted result. You need a scale to properly measure the ingredients to make gels, bubbles, etc. correctly.
As a side note, baking is less cooking and more of a science. Sometimes you will see bakers using scales and you need the right proportions of leavening, salt, etc. to gain the desired effect. It's very easy to make flat bread if things aren't done correctly.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Agreed. If you can't do a least one tenth of a gram, you'll be back to volumetric measures for salt, spices, additives, etc. And while volumetric measure for them is generally more reliable than, say, flour, accuracy for them can be more important (as you mention). I think that hundredth of a gram is ideal, particularly if you're experimenting with smaller batches. Incidentally, just last night I needed to weigh spices in the range of 0.5 - 4 g. (I personally use an old digital lab balance precise to 1mg, but that's only because it was free; measurements better than 10mg aren't really feasible or worthwhile in the kitchen.)
I think the gram precision thing is more an issue of dynamic range... Most people are using their scales for weighing out flour, confectioners sugar, etc. These things are usually needed in the 500g range, and coupled with the weight of a measuring bowl, you need a scale that can handle 1kg or so. That means a gram scale needs a range of 0.1% and a hundredth gram scale would need 0.001%. That's expensive, and so most cooks would rather just buy something cheap for flour that does ~5g and stick with volumetric measure for spices. Of course, they could always get two scales, but that would be crazy ;).
Digital scales are quite handy for cooking. I use them more and more often, the more I cook. First, it's really great for things like flour or other loose/granular things where the volume varies wildly, and you want a consistent result. All you have to do is weigh out a few cups of flour, and compare it against the box weight, to see how inaccurate volume can be at times. Cakes and breads dramatically improve with a scale.
Once you figure out the weight of something, you can reuse it, since we tend to the same make recipes a lot. I annotate my most-used recipes with weight. Using a scale also saves dirty measuring cups and spoons, since you can tare the scale, add the new ingredient, and repeat indefinitely.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
... does he use open sauce?