The Cookbook: Modernist Cuisine

The prodigious Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is rocking the food world in historic proportions as many within the food community call it the most important cookbook to be published in years, if not of all time. If nothing else, the galvanizing 6-volume, 2,438-page cookbook declares that the molecular gastronomy style of cooking to be a veritable cultural revolution.

The epic 39.5-pound behemoth, with a $625 price tag, has inspired conflicting feelings of love and hate amongst many in the industry. The book has been criticized for its prodigal nature and for needlessly complicating the simple art of cooking with majority of the recipes requiring high-tech equipment costing thousands of dollars, such as a centrifuge and a rotary evaporator and calling for ingredients few outside of a restaurant kitchen even knew existed. One particularly languorous recipe takes 100 hours to cook.

The Mount Everest of cookbooks was authored and self-published by techie multi-millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, whose eccentric resume, profiled by Malcom Gladwell in The New Yorker, only serves to deepen the mystique of the book. Myhrvold started Microsoft’s research division, worked with Stephen Hawkins on quantum cosmetology, and enjoyed an impressive foray into archaeology that earned him the world record for the most T. rex bones ever discovered.

Michael Ruhlman wrote in his review for the New York Times that he, “was left wondering how a book could be mind-crushingly boring, eye-bulgingly riveting, edifying, infuriating, frustrating, fascinating, all in the same moment,” but in the end admitted, “I can only smile, shake my head and bow to him and his crew for their work of unprecedented scope and ambition.” [Huffington Post] [Sydney Morning Herald]