Nathan Myhrvold's $500 Cookbook Now an $80 iPhone App

Nathan Myhrvold's six-volume foodie encyclopedia, Modernist Cuisine, writes reader SmartAboutThings, is one of the most expensive cooking encyclopedias, the original six-volume version retailing for $500, with the two-volume addition that followed after that selling for $115. "Now, Nathan and his team have transformed their huge food encyclopedia into an iPhone/iPad app. It's not just a digital book, but rather an expensive $80 interactive app that can do more than just provide recipes. The interactive digital cookbook is the fruit of a development team of 10-15 people that have worked over nine months on the project. The app contains 37 technique videos, 416 recipes and 1,683 photos."

Comments

alternatively

[ihtoit]

you could just mirror recipesource.com and dump it on an old notebook. Made the missus well happy, that did.

Re:alternatively

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Ever since coming down with stage 4 kidney failure, I've had to do a lot of cooking of my own food, and that was starting from basically knowing nothing. I've learned the vast majority of my technique from youtube, which offers not just one person's technique but many. I'd be quite surprised if this cookbook or even the app had any information that couldn't be found on youtube.

For example, there are tons of videos that show you how to properly choose a chef's knife (word to the wise, most people have very dull knives in their kitchen - very dangerous and makes food preparation so much slower, but they don't know the difference as they've never actually had a good sharp knife) and how to properly cut different types of foods. It may sound elementary, but try going on youtube and looking up how to dice an onion, you may find a technique that is much better than what you've been doing which will save you time.

(By the way, Victorinox 40520 is easily the best starter knife you can get, has a lifetime warranty, and even well seasoned chefs tend to love it and it is cheap if you buy it as part of a kit.)

Wrong book, SmartAboutThings.

[qXUSrfebDy]

Looking at the app, this isn't the voluminous $500 set that's been digitized. It's the ~$110 watered down version for home chefs. The home version is a bit more than just a "two-volume addition" tacked onto the original. It's a compendium of simpler recipes taken from the original volumes with preparations that gel well with what regular chefs can get their hands on.

It's still a fantastic book for wannabe kitchen scientists but it seems the author got a little too excited in writing his sensational headline.

Misleading summary, as usual.

[westlake]

The app is based on "Modernist Cuisine at Home" not the $500 50 pound reference set for the professional chef.

This is a "modern" (or Modernist) cookbook, so the recipes inside are going to be closer to what you'd find in a restaurant that uses an obscure adjective for it's title rather than what you'd see in your grandmother's kitchen. If the idea of cooking a beautiful cut of salmon in a Ziploc bag seems blasphemous, or using a digital scale instead of an elephant-shaped measuring cup is akin to high treason, you may not be ready to make the jump.

Modernist Cuisine at Home introduces a consolidated set of kitchen tools and gadgets that the home chef can reasonably afford. Don't have the funds for the laboratory-grade centrifuge featured in "Modernist Cuisine?" No problem. Not only does MCAH omit the prohibitively expensive tools from its recipes, but many of them are the same recipes found in the original, redone for the home cook. MCAH even goes as far as offering several options at varying price ranges for the equipment used within.

The same goes for the ingredients. MCAH mostly does away with the laundry list of exotic spices and chemicals featured in many "modernist" cookbooks and instead relies on ingredients you can find either at the local grocery store, or in reasonable quantities online. For the ingredients you are probably less familiar with (malic acid? agar agar?) there is a two-page spread detailing what each does, where it comes from, and what it costs. In many cases, the recipes will list alternatives if you choose not to add their recommendations to your shopping list.

[purchaser review]