What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained

Organized into basic categories like "Sweet Talk" (questions involving sugar), "Fire and Ice" (we learn why water boils and freezers burn, among other things), and "Tools and Technology" (the best kind of frying pan, for example), the book also provides illustrative recipes like Black Raspberry Coffee Cake (to demonstrate how metrics work in recipes) and Bob's Mahogany Game Hens (showing what brining can do). With technical illustrations, tips, and more, the book offers abundant evidence that learning the whys and hows of cooking can help us enjoy the culinary process almost as much as its results. --Arthur Boehm

Product Description
"Like having a scientist at your side to answer your questions in plain, non-technical language."—Science News

Why is red meat red? How do they decaffeinate coffee? Do you wish you understood the science of food but don't want to plow through dry, technical books? In What Einstein Told His Cook, University of Pittsburgh chemistry professor emeritus and award-winning Washington Post food columnist Robert L. Wolke provides reliable and witty explanations for your most burning food questions, while debunking misconceptions and helping you interpret confusing advertising and labeling. A finalist for both the James Beard Foundation and IACP Awards for best food reference, What Einstein Told His Cook engages cooks and chemists alike.

I have just one problem: nowhere does Wolke say how many sesame seeds are in a teaspoon. However, inspired by Wolke's labor-intensive lime squeezing experiment on pages 281-284, I was able to work it out myself. The answer is 840. I found this by counting the number in a half teaspoon and multiplying by two, genius that I am. (Alas, this was before I realized that I could have counted the number in a quarter teaspoon and multiplied by four.) Which reminds me of the joke about a guy on a train counting cows in a field. When asked how he could do this he explained that he counted their legs and divided by four.

Now you may think this was an idle exercise and wonder if I am not slyly making fun of Wolke's book. Au Cointreau! What I learned by counting sesame seeds exemplifies one of the lessons in the book, namely how hard it is to measure anything exactly. On page 294 Wolke asks, "Have you noticed how surface tension makes the liquid bulge up above the rim of the measuring spoon? How accurate can that be?" Well, I have, and I want to tell you getting a straight line of sesame seeds across the top of that measuring spoon was no piece of cake either!

There are nine chapters and a really excellent index, suggestions for further reading and a brief glossary. There are some excellent recipes by Wolke's wife, Marlene Parrish. I performed a "thought experiment" on several of them and found that my mouth was watering. One of them, how to make turkey or chicken gravy on page 156 is almost exactly the way I make it. (Smile.) Parrish uses the roasting pan, transferring it to the stove top burners after removing the bird, and then deglazes the pan more or less in the French style. I must note that on the previous page Wolke himself does not recommend this technique finding it "hard to straddle two burners" not to mention "one big cleanup job after dinner."

Which makes me wonder who makes the gravy in their household--or, better yet, who does the dishes!

The chapters begin with sugar, "Sweet Talk" and end with "Tools and Technology." Wolke gives us a full mouthful on the differences between cane and beet sugar, between brown and white sugar, between cocoa and chocolate, and makes me feel good about not being crazy about white chocolate. He separates the sea salt from the rock salt; he explains what MSG is and where it comes from; how home water filters works; why "the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat" is actually true, and of course how to open a champagne bottle and clarify butter... Ghee, I'm exhausted!

One of my favorite explanations is why beef in the supermarket looks bright pink on the outside and brown on the inside. (See pages 127-128, and, no, they don't spray it with dye, which is what I always thought.) I also liked it when Wolke got down and dirty and tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk, and after some heavy-duty "Techspeak" came to the conclusion that you can't; that frying an egg on the sidewalk is an urban legend. (But try the roof of your Arizona "sun-baked, dark blue, 1994 Ford Taurus" which "measured 178 degrees F, more than hot enough to coagulate both white and yolk.") (p. 193)

The icing on the cake for me (if you will) was Wolke's explanation of "Why Crackers Are Holey" beginning on page 307. What his explanation amounts to is a guide on how to make crackers, which is something I've been stumbling around in the kitchen, trying to do off and on for ages. Two key factors that I was unaware of: One, the oven has to be very, very hot ("saltines are baked at 650 to 700 degrees F."; matzos at "800 to 900 degrees F.") and Two, crackers need holes to let the air out! And now to find an oven that gets that hot...

Here are a couple of witticisms: On page 305 Wolke is talking about ovens that use light to cook food, and "the promotional statements...[that sound] like pseudoscientific hype:" They "harness the power of light." They cook "with the speed of light" and "from the inside out." He comments: "Light does indeed travel, appropriately enough, at the speed of light, but it doesn't penetrate most solids very far. Try reading this page through a steak."

Or, "The makers of matzos, the unleavened flatbread of the Jewish Passover, seem to have gone hog wild (you should excuse the expression) on perforations. Matzos are much hole-ier than secular crackers." (p. 307)

Bottom line: fascinating and fun to read.


Kitchen Chemistry   June 22, 2002
Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA)
70 out of 76 found this review helpful

It turns out that you can view cooking as a kind of chemistry mixed with biology, physics and (in the case of some French pastries, engineering.) It's no accident that the author Wolke is a retired professor of chemistry. Chemistry and cooking really do go together. After all, cooking creates chemical and physical changes in foods.

So what if you are NOT a fan of sciences? Will this book bore your or excite you? Well, I think most anyone could enjoy this book because there are quite a few bits of information that make for fascinating reading. And some of it is helpful for healthful cooking. For example, the green on potatoes is a chemical called solanine and forms in sunlight under the skin of the tuber. This is an alkyloid that's toxic, so keep your potatoes away from light and toss those green meanies.

The section on methods of cooking; pressure cooking, microwave, and induction cooking ranges was useful. These are common methods of cooking but how many of us really get an explanation of what's happening?

If you are tutoring your kids in science at home, or teaching them to cook, this book is invaluable. If you are curious about the "why" of cooking, this book is for you.


You can do Better   June 16, 2004
29 out of 42 found this review helpful

If you're interested in kitchen science, chances are you're not stupid, so why buy a book that treats you as if you were?
The Q&A format means the book can't fully develop a satisfactory explanation; it also reads like a collection of magazine columns. Any explanation that sounds even vaguely technical is covered in as few words as possible, sequestered in parentheses and prefaced with the irritating word "techspeak". This does nothing for the book's already patronizing air.
If you're a thinking cook who has taken High School chemistry, you'll be better off with Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, an acessible classic that is used as a textbook at the Culinary Institute of America--a distinction this book will never claim.
This book will serve admirably as an introduction to food science--for your nearest reasonably bright 7th grader.


Interesting, but totally pedestrian and unprofessional   August 15, 2002
Ramanujam Rajagopal (Seattle, WA United States)
27 out of 49 found this review helpful

This book is a great idea poorly executed. If you have a college education and a sense of humor that transcends pop culture, I suggest you look elsewhere for good reading. The book is written in the all-too-common short-section format, popular with the attention-span impaired, and the ideas are wedged between Wolke's loquacious commentary (which, by the way, teaches you nothing). However, there are some interesting tidbits, if you are willing to mine a ton of ore to get the ounce of gold. Furthermore, although the author is clearly not condescending, he is informal to a fault, leaving the reader with rhetorical questions where there should be answers-raising the question: was this book even edited? Take more than a cursory look in the bookstore before paying the exorbitant price for this pedestrian work, and, if you have curiosities about science and food, look to Alton Brown of "Good Eats" fame-he gets it right where Wolke just gets clueless.


Answers to questions I didn't even know I had...   June 5, 2002
Kristen (Detroit, MI USA)
26 out of 27 found this review helpful

Excellent writing! I used to love the sciences growing up but now I've entered the "real world" complete with a sit-all-day-looking-at-a-computer-screen job. Because of that, I have recently found cooking (something to invigorate my mind and senses in the evening). Wolke's book is the perfect combination of both cooking and science, with just the right amount of humor and sarcasm. I just finished it last night and am already online to buy his other works. Happy reading!