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Food & Cooking

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
Buy now

On Food and Cooking

by Harold McGee

Recommendations from our site

” If there’s one book that everybody should get it’s this book. He explains how cooking works and gives you the freedom to create your own things, to know when things go wrong, and he references other people’s books. He’s a wonderful true scientific writer and not dull.” Read more...

Wonderful Cookbooks

Rose Levy Beranbaum, Cooks & Food Writer

“He looks at the science of making a mayonnaise, and how much egg yolk you need to make a certain amount…. He was very logical. He found whenever he fried things his glasses got covered in oil, but on the inside, because the oil was going up into the air and coming down as a mist. So he wore a peaked baseball cap when he was frying, and that sorted it out.” Read more...

The best books on His Fast Food Philosophy

Henry Dimbleby, Cooks & Food Writer

“This is the book that I use when I need to come up with a very technical solution to what I am making. Cooking can be very intuitive, but, especially with food writing, you often need to get to grips with what it is that you are actually doing, so that you can have a deeper understanding of it. This is a very technical manual. Let’s say that I need to see what happens during the process of steaming, or poaching, or frying; I always go to this book. McGee is very clear and to the point. Despite the fact that he is quite technical, it’s never boring.” Read more...

Yotam Ottolenghi recommends some of his Favourite Cookbooks

Yotam Ottolenghi, Cooks & Food Writer

Our most recommended books

  • The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
    by Marcella Hazan

  • On Food and Cooking
    by Harold McGee

  • The Alice B Toklas Cookbook
    by Alice B Toklas

  • World Atlas of Wine
    by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson

  • How to Eat
    by Nigella Lawson

  • French Provincial Cooking
    by Elizabeth David

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