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>> Kim Ricketts: Good afternoon everyone and welcome. Thanks for your patience. My name is
Kim Ricketts. I'm here to introduce and welcome Harold McGee, who is visiting us as part of the
Microsoft Research Visiting Speakers Series and the Microsoft Chef Series.
We're here together in the same room. Harold is here today to discuss his book, "Keys to Good
Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes." In the confusing and often
contradictory world of food safety, appliances, ingredients and recipes, we can reply upon
science to guide us from market to table. Long-held assumptions about cooking often fall away
when examined and held up to scientific tests. Yet understanding this food science will lead
directly to better, safer, more delicious food.
Harold writes about the science of food and cooking and is the author of the award-winning
classic on food and cooking, "The Science and Lore of the Kitchen." He writes a monthly column,
The Curious Cook, for the New York Times. He's been named Food Writer of the Year by Bon
Apetite Magazine and to the Time 100, an annual list of the world's most influential people.
Please join me in welcoming Harold McGee to Microsoft.
[applause]
>> Harold McGee: Thanks very much, Kim. And thanks for coming. So I have a new book out,
and I'm on tour. And this is part of the tour. And so I thought what I would do is just talk for 10 or
15 minutes about how I got into this line of business and a little bit about on food and cooking the
first book I did and then how keys to good cooking, the new one, is different. And then just have
a conversation with you all for the rest of the time, find out what you would like to talk about.
So I'm not a chemist. And I'm not a cook. At least not a professional cook. And not
professionally trained in either one of them. What happened was I loved astronomy, and so I
went to Cal Tech to study astronomy in 1969.
And I did that for several years. And after several years found myself spending way too much of
my time standing in line to use the campus mainframe with my stack of punch cards, which
usually had a hanging Chad which meant that I had to come back to do that assignment.
And it just seemed to me that my interest in astronomy was waning because of the way, the kinds
of things that I needed to do in order to, at that time, be a professional astronomer. So that
helped me realize that what I was interested in was more of the ideas and the emotions that
astronomy involved, thinking about those questions.
So I decided to switch to philosophy and literature, which I'd also been interested in. And I
decided you know this is not the place to study those things so I'll apply for transfer. And I asked
my teachers, Cal Tech does have professors of English and history and philosophy, in order to
give an accredited degree, and I told them loved your courses, I'm going to kind of follow up on
this, please give me letters of recommendation so that I can go to Stanford or someplace like
that.
And they said no, we don't have any students so we want you to stay. [laughter].
And they said if you stay -- because you're here because you love science. And that hasn't
changed. You stay here, we'll have classes where you'll be the only student and there will be a
couple of us. [laughter].
And we'll give you the best education in literature and philosophy that you could ask for. And
what they didn't mention, but which turned out to be the best part of the deal, was I was then able
to cherry pick the science courses. I wasn't locked into Applied Math 95 and all that stuff, I could
take anything I wanted, and I did.
And that turned out to be a great preparation for writing about food, because it seems to me that
you can illuminate food from almost any scientific discipline, astronomy included.
So I stayed and got a bachelor of science degree in literature. [laughter].
From Cal Tech. And then went on, got a Ph.D. and wrote a thesis whose title is Keats on the
Progress of Taste, but this was literary taste rather than literal taste.
And taught for a few years, but I wasn't able to get a tenured track job. And after a few years of
these year-to-year contracts, that got kind of old. And I thought, well, you know I've been
teaching writing among other things so I think I'm going to try -- I'm going to give this up for a year
and try to write, see if I can make a living doing that.
And I thought I would recoup my interest and my investment in science by writing about science.
So I looked around and, well, astronomy was being covered by Steven Hawking and biology and
medicine by Lewis Thomas. I don't know if any of you remember him. He feels a remarkable
essayist. So those examples discouraged me from the bigger, more prestigious subjects.
And I instead thought, you know, it would be kind of interesting to look at the science of everyday
life, the kinds of things that are happening all around us all the time that we just don't think to look
past the surface of.
And weather is interesting and geology is interesting, all kinds of things are interesting, but I
settled on food for a couple of reasons. One was that it's the place where we interact with natural
materials and actually do things to them. Make a difference with them.
You know, with the weather, we just suffer it. We observe it, and that's about it. With food, we
can actually do things and fun things, creative things, and experiment.
So I thought that was one big advantage. I also was getting interested in cooking. I'm now in my
mid to late 20s, and getting more interested in that kind of thing.
And wine. And then what really did it for me was a very particular question from a friend of mine
who was from New Orleans. A coloriage scholar who loved red beans and rice. So I was talking
about this idea of writing about the science of cooking one day. And he said: Okay, if you're
going to write about the science of cooking I've got a question for you. My favorite food is red
beans and rice and my problem with my favorite food is I can only have a little bit of it otherwise I
suffer.
And so I want to know why it is that red beans give me gas and I want to know: Is there anything
I can do about that? Are there other beans that are less troublesome? Could I replace with
those? And this was right about the same time that "Blazing Saddles" came out.
[laughter]
So it was a topical question. I went to the library for the first time really to delve into the food
science literature to see if that information was available. I thought it was a very good question
and fun, and discovered on that trip to the library the TX section of the Library of Congress
system which I had never been in before, which was this undiscovered treasure trove of arcane
information about foods and food preparation processes that had been developed for industry but
never translated for restaurant cooks, home cooks, just ordinary people who were interested in
food.
So I knew that I had found something that I could spend a couple of years on and do something
interesting with. I also found the answer to my friend's question, which was great.
But beyond that, I found that most of the research on the subject had been funded by NASA. And
if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. And that made me realize, and my publisher then
reinforced this idea, that just as interesting as the facts are how we come to know the facts and
how they connect with other things in the world.
So that's how I came to write on food and cooking. And I had the idea in the late '70s. It was a
time when Americans were beginning to get really interested in food but the food revolution had
not really begun. So I was just very luckily placed to take advantage of that as it developed.
I did the book. I wrote the book on an electric typewriter. I did research for the book by going to
libraries and finding the index volumes of poultry science and serial chemistry and looking to see
if anyone had addressed the issue of whatever over 10 years, and if not I gave up because I
couldn't spend all my time on that particular question.
It was a very inefficient way to do research. And the information was pretty sparse. So then 20
years later, when the second edition came out, the red volume, the problem was actually the
reverse. Now we had computers and the Internet and there was too much information. And I
would go to UC Davis, which has a great food science department, and essentially immerse
myself in the subject for a week, stay at a hotel, and be at the library all day and then take all the
stuff that I was able to find out home with me and turn it into a chapter.
So that's the story of "On Food and Cooking." Keys to Good Cooking, the new one, came about
because a lot of professional and home cooks who like "On Food and Cooking" also told me the
problem with this book is that if I have a particular problem in the kitchen, it takes me way too
long to find the answer because there's all this other stuff in there. It's not just practical
information that's where these things came from and how other cultures use them and interesting
to know but not helpful in the kitchen.
"On Food and Cooking" is a book that's meant to be read in a chair, sitting down and reading
sections at a time. "Keys to Good Cooking" is meant to be used in the kitchen to answer
questions in the course of cooking. So it's a reference book about techniques, ingredients,
problems, best ways to do things and worst ways to do things.
So if you're a picking a recipe or you've got a recipe and it's leading you down the wrong path and
you know that or if it's Thanksgiving and you haven't cooked a turkey for a year and you want to
remind yourself what that involves and what are the pros and cons of brining and stuffing and all
that kind of thing, that's what's in this book.
No recipes but lots of information to help you work with recipes. It's a very interesting time in the
food and cooking world because when I started writing about the science of food and cooking,
people generally thought it was a strange idea. And any kind of press I got was sort of the mad
scientist approach. What's this crazy guy doing.
But now it's become fashionable. And there are TV shows about it. And every magazine and
recipe book will include sidebars about what's happening to the protein molecules when you're
doing this and doing that.
And of course there's experimental cooking, the kind of thing that Nathan Myhrvold is about to
publish a Magnum Opus on.
Along with all that has come a lot of misinformation, or just bad information. Because it's now a
fashionable subject, everybody's getting into the act and people are saying molecules do this and
that just in order to be able to use the word molecules. And so there is a lot of misleading
information out there. And that's again, part of the reason I thought it would be useful to have a
book that does nothing but talk about that kind of thing so that you don't have to take it on faith
that this particular recipe for pasta is giving you the real deal on starch.
Anyway, that's how I came to do this. That's what "Keys to Good Cooking" is all about. And now
I'd be happy to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about.
>>: I recently acquired an incredibly convenient recipe for making pumpkin custard which I've
made back to back about five times because it keeps running out and it doesn't follow what you
described "On Food and Cooking" as the way to make custard at all. And I thought I'd ask why
does it work? Consists of taking a can of pumpkin puree and 16 ounces of cottage cheese,
yogurt, four eggs, some sugar, cinnamon, mix it up, put it in the [inaudible] toss it in the oven for
half an hour and you're done. No slow cooking over the stove, adding hot milk, just incredibly
easy, which I like, mind you.
>> Harold McGee: Yeah, well, what I would say that's not a custard.
[laughter]
And I would make the general statement that there's lots and lots of different routes to the same
basic end result. The different routes will get you to slightly different places. But usually if
someone tells you this is the only way to get the perfect X, you can -- you know not to trust them,
because there's no such thing as the perfect way to get to X.
But that said, that's a recipe that -- a custard is egg-setting liquid. The fact that you start with
concentrated pumpkin or sweet potato puree, that's starch. You're making a pudding, not a
custard. And puddings are very easy to make. There's no risk of the egg proteins curdling
because they've been protected by all the starch that comes from the pumpkin. But it sounds
delicious. [laughter]
>>: You committed a good part of your life to food. But you're thin. How do you do that?
>> Harold McGee: That's genetics. Both my parents are like this, and I eat -- I think I'm a very
inefficient metabolizer is what it comes down to. I love to eat. I eat everything. My blood lipids
are not great. So that at least shows what it is that I'm eating. But the fact that this happens is
my parents.
[laughter]
And I wish -- so many people early on, especially when this was a weird approach to cooking,
people would look at me and say: You don't like to eat do you, you don't like the subject, you're a
scientist, you don't like it.
So I wish I could kind of go into a phone booth and whiz around a couple times and turn into
James Beard, 300 pounds, jolly, mustache.
>>: How much testing and experimentation goes into your process of coming up with these
principles versus just research?
>> Harold McGee: I do a lot of testing and cooking in the kitchen, because I learned early on that
what passes for fact in a food science textbook or a journal often doesn't bear directly or even at
all on what happens on a smaller scale in a kitchen.
And also I learned very early on, knowing chemistry is wonderful. But foods are so complicated
that knowing chemistry doesn't really tell you much when it comes to predicting what's going to
happen with a particular system.
You have to do the experiment in order to be sure. You can have educated guesses, but I've
been wrong so many times that I always have to do it before I believe myself. So a lot. Yeah.
>>: Cooks Magazine is a fairly popular magazine and quite often the articles start out with I want
to make the perfect custard. Sort of science-driven experiment. I'd be interested in your thoughts
or comments about Cooks Magazine and Kitchen Science which was a popular book that I have,
those documents. The quality of science in Cooks Magazine.
>> Harold McGee: I feel with cooks, my problem with cooks, I think they do -- what they do, they
do very well. But what they do is not what I would do. And what they do is to kind of predefine
what a thing should be and then say that the thing that gets them to that easiest and quickest is
the perfect way to do it.
And I actually don't read it that much anymore because so many times I've felt that it's leaving out
so much about a particular ingredient or a particular dish. It's picking at some definitions pretty
narrowly.
But that said, you know, it is a way to kind of gradually accumulate a good amount of
understanding about how things work. So I think in that sense it's a valuable contribution.
And then Kitchen Science, is that a book that by ->>: About 20 years old, maybe.
>> Harold McGee: Peter Barham, kind of thin? Or Howard Hillman.
>>: That's the one.
>> Harold McGee: That's kind of a Q&A book. So it answers specific questions. And it's good.
But if you don't happen to have that question or if you have a question that's not in the book, then
it's not so helpful.
>>: I think one of the things you've written about is like differences among people, a sensitivity to
cilantro or the smell of whatever it is in urine after eating asparagus. There's one I think you
haven't addressed, I've been wondering about. I'm a foodie. Spend all my time, money cooking.
I want to be able to taste truffles and have that whatever experience that people describe and pity
and mock those who can't. Nothing wrong with them, but I don't get anything from them, is there
a difference there?
>> Harold McGee: So I was at a meeting, the meetings that gave us the unfortunate term
molecular gastronomy, back in the '90s. There was a meeting where the subject was taste and
smell.
And one of the speakers was the director of the Monelle Chemical Sensor Center in Philadelphia.
If you have any interest in taste and smell, you should check out their website because they do
wonderful work there. Have amazing people working there.
So he came and he gave a talk about various things. Among them, the characteristic smell of
black truffles in particular. Is it black truffles rather than white?
>>: The only thing I get is the truffle oil, which is I'm sure completely artificial, in some lab that
may be like it.
>> Harold McGee: Exactly. So it's black truffles that have a particular compound in them. It's a
steroid androstenone, which is what attracts pigs. That's how pigs are, why pigs are good
hunters for them, because it's a component of the pheromone that males make for females.
So you take female pigs out and find truffles that way. So when they figured out that was the
major component of the aroma, they then began to study it. Because it's also found in some
human secretions, they began to study human responses to it.
And they found that a lot of people can't detect it. And so that actually became a demonstration
at Monelle. They would -- if you came to do a tour, they would give you a sample and ask you to
smell it. They were actually taking statistics, can you smell it, isn't it interesting that some of us
can smell it and some of us can't. That kind of thing.
The guy who is giving the tour most often couldn't smell it. But after a few months of giving the
tour, he started to smell it. And so what that indicates is that sometimes we may have receptors
for things that are expressed in very low numbers, not high enough that we'll actually be able to
register them but that with repeated exposure there's some mechanism that multiplies those
receptors to the point that you can actually detect them.
So Gary gave this talk at [inaudible] to explain this and there was a chef, French chef, three star
chef, Pierre Garnier, no less, who was there and this test tube was passed around. He couldn't
smell it. French, three star chef, can't smell truffles.
So it happens to the best of us. But if you'd like to work on it, you can work on it.
[laughter]
>>: Wonder if you've ever tried a new wave often. Got one of these, it's like a conduction
infrared, kind of countertop cooking unit, wondered if you've tried anything like that?
>> Harold McGee: No. New Wave is what it's called? Convection and microwave.
>>: Convection and maybe infrared.
>> Harold McGee: Infrared as well. So it has a halogen ->>: [inaudible].
>> Harold McGee: So these have been around for I'd say about 10 years or so. And they, there
was a big launch of them about 10 years ago, and then they disappeared. I guess they were too
expensive or something. But maybe their time is coming.
I think there's a lot to be said for them, because there are lots of ways to get energy into foods.
And different things get energy into different depths or at different rates and that can be real
useful for kind of fine tuning the cooking of meats, especially.
But I don't know that particular one. I'll have to get one and start playing.
Yes.
>>: I guess it was on an episode of Top Chef one of the challenges was to do something with
lobster. And one of the contestants boiled the lobster and she put a cork, like a wine bottle cork
or champagne cork in the water with the lobster and she said this is an old trick to help keep the
lobster meat tender.
And that just didn't totally make any sense to me. I was wondering if there's actually any basis in
fact or was she just a little wise tale thing.
>> Harold McGee: To me it seems to me it's a little old Italian chef's tale. Because it's a very
common thing that's said about cooking octopus.
If you're going to stew octopus you should have a wine cork in the liquid. So I was actually
working in the kitchens one day at the French Laundry down in California, and still remarkable to
me that this kind of thing goes on in a kitchen of that caliber. But I was there to kind of answer
questions, talk with people. And this question came up. There was a chef from Italy. And they
were making octopus, who said why aren't you putting corks in the water? And they said why
would we put corks in the water?
And he explained. And everybody looked at me and I said I can't think of what it could possibly
do. The reason corks are valuable as wine stoppers is that they're inert. They don't destroy the
wine. But I said I've never done the experiment.
So Thomas Keller said: Go ahead, do the experiment. So we did two pots side by side. One
with corks, one without. The first thing we noticed when we threw a cork in was, of course, it
floats, which means that there's like a square millimeter of surface contact with the water. So we
thought that's not going to do anything. So let's put a bunch of corks in there. And so there was
like 20 corks. We weighed them down with a plate so we'd maximize the contact.
And then we cooked them the same length of time and then divided them up, put them in the
back, had people come along and taste them side by side.
And nobody could tell a difference except that one tasted a little woody. [laughter].
So I think the lobster thing has been borrowed from the octopus world.
>>: It may have been octopus.
>> Harold McGee: I bet it was. Because lobster doesn't need any help really in being tender,
except avoiding overcooking it.
So anyway. Yes.
>>: I used to go camping a lot and I had a friend that claimed that getting coffee when you're up
in high altitudes is a chore, he claimed he could boil water, just throw coffee grounds into the
boiling water, brew coffee. By throwing egg shells into the mix it would cause the coffee grounds
to precipitate to the bottom. And I'm wondering if that's true. If it is true, why that is?
>> Harold McGee: Well, in fact, a lot of older coffee recipes call for exactly that. If you look at
19th century recipes, they'll often call for that. And I think it's the residual egg white on the egg
shell that does it and not the egg shell itself.
And it's essentially using the same principle that's used in fining wines, and in clarifying stocks.
The proteins just attract and hold onto particles of various kinds and form a kind of clot that takes
them out. So, yeah. Yes.
>>: I'm curious with Italian chef with the French Laundry what kind of responses do people get
when you pierce these long-held cherished things, my grandmother -- whatever?
>> Harold McGee: For the most part, these days acceptance and the best example of that in my
recent work is this column I did for the Times about pasta. Where one day I was doing the usual
thing, boiling eight quarts of water in order to cook one pound of pasta. It takes like half an hour
to bring the water up, and then you cook for 15 minutes. And I'm pouring all the water and the
energy down the drain. Getting steam on my glasses. I can't see anything and wondering why
am I doing this?
So I tried starting with cold water and pasta, cold water, cold pan, turn on the heat, and just
enough water to cover the pasta. Kind of like rice or something like that.
And all the books say it's going to come out gummy and sticky and so on. It didn't. It came out
delicious. And the cooking liquid did get very thick, but it was thick in a way a sauce is thick and it
had a wonderful pasta flavor. So I presented this to my editor and he said, okay, that's great.
Call Marchella Hassan [phonetic] and Lydia Bostionic [phonetic] and get them to comment on
this.
Because it's contrary to anything they've ever written or done. And so I did that and was shocked
at the result. They both said: That's interesting, let me give it a try and I'll get back to you. They
both tried it and got back to me and said, both of them, in their own ways, you know, that's not so
bad. I still prefer mine. But thank you for checking that kind of thing out.
I thought I was going to get exactly what you ->>: [inaudible].
>> Harold McGee: Yeah. So I think people are much more open to the possibility these days
that there are more than one root to the same goal, and it's worth knowing about them, yeah.
Question back there.
>>: So I have both of your books, and I haven't read them all yet. But I'm petrified that after
[inaudible] that I will have a question to which your books will not have an answer to. And then
where do I go?
>> Harold McGee: I guarantee you that that's going to happen. And that's part of the point,
actually. If I can get you to be thinking about food in such a way that you end up with more
questions than answers, I think that's a good thing.
And I would say for a lot of time, for a lot of things, the place to go for an answer that you don't
find in the book is into the kitchen to do an experiment and to see what happens.
I get a lot of questions where people will ask me: What will happen if I do X? And my response
is: Do it and find out. Because there's still so much, I think, just to observe from doing
side-by-side comparisons, an experiment and a control.
That's why I love birds, by the way. I'm getting a little tired of Thanksgiving stuff at this point, but
birds are welcome because they're bilaterally symmetrical, you can do one thing to one side and
one to the other side and stick it in the oven, all set.
>>: Can you comment on the belief that reheating food in microwave in plastic affects the food at
a micro level?
>> Harold McGee: Reheating -- microwaving food when the food comes in contact with the
plastic wrap is generally advised against because plasticizers in the wrap can end up migrating
into the foods at those high temperatures. And that's not in general a desirable thing to have
these unknown and foreign materials in our foods.
Now, I think it's much less of an issue these days because the formerly nasty but really useful
plastic wraps like Saran and PVC -- Saran -- and I discovered this the hard way by doing a
demonstration that failed -- Saran has been reformulated. It's now just polyethylene. But it used
to be Polyvinylidene chloride which was a really good oxygen barrier, was the best plastic wrap.
But it's environmentally unfriendly and you didn't want to heat with it because some stuff could
leach into the food and that wouldn't be good.
Polyethylene doesn't have much of that. So it's much less of an issue with polyethylene. But I
still think on the precautionary principle -- there's no need for it to be the case.
When I warm something up in the microwave, I have it in a glass or a ceramic bowl and I just put
a plate on top of it. And then you don't have to worry about it.
Yes?
>>: So what do you think about the whole [inaudible] thing, because I have a friend who is really
into gadgets. And he went and he got an emerging circulator. His girlfriend calls a bucket with a
thing. And he got a vacuum sealer and he's proceeded to make all sorts of things at precise
temperatures, and he did these ribs at 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And I look at that and I think, oh
my God from a food safety perspective is this a problem?
So I'm sort of wondering, are these going to come into our kitchens? And when they do, is there
going to be like a mass epidemic of people having problems from food that's not heated enough.
>> Harold McGee: Good question. So sous-vide is French for undervacuum. And it refers to the
vacuum packing part of it, which is putting foods into plastic so that when you then put them into
this very well-controlled water bath they're not exposed to the water. So to me that's kind of
getting things backwards, because the important thing about the technique isn't the wrapping, it's
the temperature control.
So I prefer to talk about low temperature or precise temperature control cooking. And in a way
it's kind of amazing it's taken this long for cooks to have that kind of access to control. It's been in
laboratories for decades and cooking's essentially taking ingredients and transforming them with
heat. If you don't have control over the heat it can be dicy. That's why I think so many things
don't come out so well.
So especially for meat and fish, I think it's a wonderful thing. If people are cooking things at 120
degrees, then, yeah, that's a problem, because that's right at the cusp of bacteria having a really
great time and bacteria beginning to die off. And you don't want to be up there.
But the books that have come out on the subject, Nathan's will be another amazing tone, I think
there will be pretty much a whole volume devoted to just to that technique.
The rules are pretty clear about the temperatures and the times and so on, and if people follow
the rules everything will be fine. If people don't follow the rules then there could be problems.
Fortunately I think that most -- 120 is pretty low even for rare meat. So if you get it up to 130, 135
it's still pretty rare and that's a good temperature for killing bacteria. Just takes a longer time to
do so.
>>: When it says 140 if you do any sort of commercial food service.
>> Harold McGee: Yeah. And that really comes from federal standards, which have been
creeping down over the years. And so we're all learning, because it is a new situation to have so
many people using it.
>>: You made reference to sort of the pop food scientists. I'm thinking like Alton Brown on the
Food Network. They've introduced a lot of interest in science in cooking, why does my cooking
come out better doing this and previous stuff. Have you been approached about doing anything
or thought about doing any specials or television programs?
>> Harold McGee: Well, I've done the odd thing here and there. In fact, just this morning I was
on Martha Stewart.
[laughter]
Still not quite sure what to think about that. But, yeah, you know it was excellent. Very good
questions and questions that were important to a lot of people. But I was surprised to be there.
Surprised to be asked.
>>: Certainly seems there's enough material and enough demonstrations and live LABS that
could be done to make it an interesting program.
>> Harold McGee: Yeah. Actually I think Alton Brown does a great job. To me he's an educator.
He's found a way to take material like this and make it interesting and appealing. Something you
can watch for an hour and you remember it, because he's made it so much fun. So I think he
does great work. And he's also kind enough to start some of the episodes by showing him sitting
in a hammock, reading my book and then putting it down and then getting on with the show.
So anyway, he's a good guy.
>>: Are we going to see you on Food Network?
>> Harold McGee: That I don't know. I don't know. I think Food Network, especially, you have to
have a certain personality, I think, to ->>: The next Rachel Ray.
>> Harold McGee: Gotta work on my bubbliness I think. Anyway, yes.
>>: What advice would you give to people who might be interested in pursuing a career in food
science?
>> Harold McGee: Advice for people who might be pursuing a career in food science? I think it's
a really interesting time to be going into food science right now, because 10 or 15 years ago the
career path was pretty direct from school to craft.
That was really about it. Or to an academic position where you would then get funds from craft to
work on processed cheese.
But one of the interesting things that's happened in this kind of, the way food science has become
fashionable, is that food scientists have realized that they're subject is sexier than they knew.
But it's only interesting to more people if they address issues that are of interest to more people.
And a number of restaurants these days actually have established semiformal collaborations with
food scientists.
The best example of this is Heston Bloomenthal in England who has a relationship with the food
chemistry department at Redding. And then the Sensory Psychology Department at Oxford. And
another group up in the north somewhere. So a flavor group at Nottingham.
And so these people all come down to the restaurant every once in a while, and he has a
research and development kitchen as well as his restaurant kitchen.
And the R&D kitchen is there essentially to come up with new ideas and better understanding of
things. And ->>: [inaudible].
>> Harold McGee: I'm sorry?
>>: El Buey has that as well.
>> Harold McGee: El Buey has it as well, yes. And a number of restaurants now. Maybe not as
formal or as with as many people involved. But so I think that's going to happen more and more.
And on the other side, the food companies are realizing that these chefs know something about
what makes foods delicious that will be worth their knowing, too.
And food scientists are going to be the people that will help translate what it is that chefs have
learned to do over the course of thousands of years and find ways of making mass produced
foods better.
So I think there's opportunities in the restaurant world and in the manufacturing world that didn't
exist before. So it's a good time. And there's some good programs. UC Davis, Rutgers, Illinois.
UMASS, lots of good programs.
>>: When you make mashed potatoes, do you boil them whole with the skin on and try to get the
skin off when they're raging hot? I've heard that a few times, but it just is too difficult.
>> Harold McGee: Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't do that. I prepeel. I steam them. I steam a lot
because it's a way of using, again, less water, less energy, less time. It's a lot faster.
And steam other things in there as well at the same time. Garlic and celery and things like that
and just mash them up together, yeah.
>>: I'm always surprised at recipes that use whole numbers for things. Like why does the cake
take three eggs rather than 2.7 egg whites and 2.4 egg yolks? Why are recipes so flexible in this
way?
>> Harold McGee: Well, if you think about how anyone would ever have tried it with fractional
whites and yolks. You've got a whole egg, you'll throw in a whole egg. Or separate it into whites
or yolks or throw in three whites for two yolks, things like that.
When it comes to cakes and breads and things like that there's a tremendous amount of
flexibility. And you can make fairly substantial changes in proportions of major ingredients and
still have it come out palatable. They'll be different, but they'll still be palatable. And it becomes a
question of what exactly are you aiming for, what is your definition of perfection for a layer cake or
something like that.
And if it's worth measuring out fractional yolks and whites, then that's what you'll do. Otherwise
you'll take the easy way and just use whole measures.
But I think it is true that a lot of ideas about desirable proportions are very arbitrary. And an
example I'll give you is mayonnaise, which I've written about, where classic recipes say that you,
in order to emulsify one cup of oil, you need one egg yolk. And that's pretty suspicious-sounding.
So when I read that and thought about it, I thought that was is probably arbitrary. I'm going to see
how many cups of oil you really can emulsify with one egg yolk and the answer was quarts. Not
two cups or three cups, but quarts.
So again I think what happens is that people find a set of proportions or a thought that works and
then they say this is the way to do it when in fact it's just one way.
>>: As an appetizer would you describe one or two topics that I would find in your book, in your
new book?
>> Harold McGee: Well, there is a whole chapter on food safety, since that question was raised.
I think it should be an issue not just for people doing sous-vide cooking, but for anybody who
cooks for other people.
And the way people take care of or don't take care of leftovers where I think we would have many
better next mornings than we do now if people took more care with that, didn't quite relax after
dinner until they'd put things away rather than letting them sit out for a long time. So that chapter
tries to essentially summarize what's going on in a kitchen, what microbes are there, how do they
persist, what can you do about them, can you live with them, those sorts of issues. As well as
specific things to do if you're dealing with people who are ill, that kind of thing. So that's one
example.
And then the other things are, again, basic advice about everyday techniques and everyday
dishes, but pointing out that there is more than one way to get to the same thing. So I don't think
you'll find the pasta idea in a cookbook. And I don't think you'll find the mayonnaise, the fact that
you don't have to worry about how many egg yolks you've got in a cookbook. So those sorts of
things are what it brings.
>>: Maybe two more questions.
>> Harold McGee: Okay. I see -- how about people who haven't had a chance to ask a question
yet?
>>: So I know you said that there's many paths to get to the same ending but Thanksgiving is
next week. It's going to be like a pretty straightforward simple great way to get a great turkey.
What would be your first choice after all the experimenting?
>> Harold McGee: I would say if that's what you want, cut it up into breast and leg and cook
them separately. And if that's acceptable, it works great.
If you want to present a whole bird, then it really is a challenge, because you've got these two
different kinds of meat that need to be cooked to different temperatures, and they're on the same
bird in the same oven.
So if presentation is less of an issue, then definitely cook them separately and cook the breast to
150 and the legs to 165 or 170 and get a nice digital thermometer, not the so-called instant read
dial thermometers that are unreliable. If you're going to do the whole bird, then the thing I like to
do, but it doesn't absolve you of paying really close attention, is to take the bird out a few hours
ahead of time and ice the breasts down while the legs warm up to room temperature, and then
the bird goes into the oven with a temperature differential built in, and if you catch the breast at
just the right moment, it's good. But you still have to monitor it.
In the way, way back.
>>: This is a question for my own sanity. My boyfriend has been obsessed with making stock for
the last month. He's an engineer. So he's extremely precise. And I'm not a foodie. I enjoy food
but I'm not precise when I'm cooking. Do you have any advice?
>> Harold McGee: About how to live with him? [laughter].
>>: How to give him tips for the stock. I tried like the last five that he made and to me it's
absolutely delicious. But he's not happy with it. There's something missing.
>> Harold McGee: Something missing. Are these beef stocks? Or veal or chicken?
>>: Chicken.
>> Harold McGee: Chicken. Has he tried the pressure cooker?
>>: No [laughter].
>> Harold McGee: There you go. So brown the bones in the oven, along with some vegetables,
carrots and onions and things like that. Put all the stuff in a pressure cooker and cook for about
40 minutes. And the great thing about the pressure cooker, because he says something is
missing, when you cook the stock in a traditional way the kitchen smells great because all this
aroma is coming out of the stock. In a pressure cooker, it's retained, doesn't go anywhere. And
so he may find that that gives him a more concentrated flavor.
>>: Put everything in the oven before ->> Harold McGee: Yeah, brown things -- well, that's actually a matter of taste. Some people
prefer to make what's called a white stock where you haven't prebrowned. But for the most
flavor, for the biggest flavor, what you want to do is brown it first.
>>: Okay. Thank you.
>> Harold McGee: Okay.
>> Kim Ricketts: Thank you.
[applause]