For the holidays, Gilt Taste is thrilled to be giving away two copies of the most ambitious cookbook in history: Modernist Cuisine. To enter the contest, visit http://on.fb.me/udujt5. And to understand why a singular genius rounded up a team of crack chefs, scientists, and artists to create a 45-pound cookbook, read on. –Ed.
(Photos by Molly Wizenberg, except for the Modernist Cuisine set, courtesy of the authors)Nathan Myhrvold is the type of man—if this can be a “type” of man—who decides one day that dinosaurs are pretty interesting, and ends up a few years later uncovering more Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons than anyone in history. In his spare time. So when the former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft (and student and friend of Stephen Hawking) decided to write a cookbook, it was going to be a big deal.
The self-published Modernist Cuisine, is, by turns, a history of cooking, a science textbook that explains in plain language what happens when you make food, and an art book. Famously, it retails for around $600, and is so big it contains four pounds of ink. And of course, a comprehensive, multi-volume exploration and explanation of cooking—especially the kind of cooking some people call “molecular gastronomy”—was going to be provocative. Detractors have called it everything from a rich man’s vanity project to the death of “real” food.
But its fans—including many of the world’s greatest chefs—call it an inspiration, a resource that will make for generations of better cooks. Despite its price, its first run of 6,000 copies sold out instantly in the spring, and the world waited, patiently, for a second run to print, now finally available. We talked with Myhrvold and Maxime Bilet, a chef and co-author, about why modernist cuisine isn’t about technology, being a human thermostat, and why great food doesn’t have to be delicious.
So what, really, is Modernist Cuisine all about? Not just the book, but the cuisine?
Nathan Myhrvold: Modernist cuisine is a style of cooking with an enthusiasm for breaking rules. It’s an attitude, really. The custard table [a chart in the book that describes all the different textures a custard can be just by varying the amount of egg, liquid, or heat] is modernist in its attitude. There’s no part of the table that Escoffier couldn’t have done; the only ingredients are liquid and milk, and the only technique is heat. But he didn’t because the attitude in his era was that you had to be an apprentice for many years, and that’s how you learned these textures.
In our case, we went and tested lots of dilutions and temperatures. It’s the idea that there can be a break from the past, an intentional inquisitiveness, a spirit of questioning why things have always been done a certain way, and therefore that things can be done a different way.
There’s a certain reaction to this that just sees a clinical coldness. What do you say to people who say this isn’t really cooking?
Maxime Bilet: I can understand—it’s natural to be defensive about things that may seem to jeopardize the authenticity of something you’re connected to. But we embrace traditional cooking as much as anyone. When I was younger, hearing about chefs using sous vide, hydrocolloids, I had the exact same response: “Do you need that? Is it fundamental to creating a wonderful meal?” Of course not. People have been eating well for a long time. But like any science, any art, you’re going to have access to new information and people who want to build on previously achieved wisdom, and you can refine and be inventive.
NM: People ask me, “Why can’t you do simple, natural food, like a bowl of pasta with cheese? Wine and bread?” I start laughing. Pasta and bread don’t grow on trees, and if you think bread is a trivial step from grain, try making some. Incredible amounts of human creativity and inventiveness came together to make those foods!
What about the idea that the technology you advocate and instruct us on in the book, like cooking sous vide, takes the human element out of cooking?
NM: To the people who say sous vide is a soulless form of cooking, I ask, “What are you objecting to? That it has a digital thermostat?” Effectively, they’re saying, as cooks, “I want to be a human thermostat.” Why do you think being a human thermostat is your highest and best use?
A good grill cook can have 20 steaks sizzling, get them all rare, medium rare, whatever. That’s a pretty awesome skill. But how many cooks are really that good? And even if you take this part out, there’s still plenty more to do! It’s not like cooking becomes trivial after that: It’s how to combine flavors, textures—an infinite amount of creativity. I think cooking is an art, not a science. But when you get down to the very narrow tasks of cooking something to a particular temperature, that’s a very tiny part of it.
So is the conversation around Modernist Cuisine too much about the technology and technique, and not in the attitude and creativity of modernism? Is that the more lasting idea? And what about all the detractors who complain about the showiness of it all?
MB: The people who are critical of what they assume modernist cooking to be have a very valid point. Some chefs see the techniques, but don’t do it with success—they might make a foam with a liquid that’s not flavorful enough. There are many reasons you would use one of these techniques, but there has to be a point, not just to be self-referential. That’s why we for the most part used classic dishes to deliver the insights of the modern spectrum. What we’ve explored is the technique, but for the composition, we’ve used traditional forms – cheeseburger, omelet, glazed carrots, tofu.
NM: Modern literature and art is as much about challenging people’s ideas as it is expressing them. Bear with me. In their time, the Impressionists were “ugly,” and the question was “What is art?” Is an artist a thinker or just a pretty picture maker? The world has answered that question for a hundred years, but it’s a pretty new thing when it comes to food. The same people who can accept that art can be wild and challenging can be incredibly conservative when it comes to food.
But is a gin and tonic delicious? The bitterness of the tonic is an essential part of that dish. I don’t think food needs to be conventionally delicious to be profound. In coming to love something, you redefine deliciousness. If food is an art, then it cannot be only about being delicious.
Buildings range from a purely prosaic roof over your head to others that really are art; they affect you emotionally. But if you insisted every building be done by Frank Gehry, it would be a very impractical world. Lots of food is prosaic—you need it for fuel. Some is very fine craft. Some is art – an expression of human creativity. But if you can accept that it’s art, then you can’t put rules on it.
So after five years, a huge team, and lots of cut-open kitchen tools, we have Modernist Cuisine, which some very prominent chefs are saying will fundamentally change generations of cooks. Why did you do this?
MB: The intention was to give every idea, every piece of information we could discover, and make it practical. It’s diverse—history, science, creativity, all the different applications of these concepts and recipes. Some are very approachable, simple dishes, and some things are quite complex, that only a certain type of chef will want to explore. The range that we covered can be something that’s useful to a huge range of people, from professional chefs to people who eat and just want to know more.
NM: Of course, we really want it to have some impact. I don’t know what that will be. I don’t take it for granted. But our view is that there is a tremendous amount of culinary technique and information created by many people, but that there was no comprehensive way to grasp it. What seemed to be little tricks here and there, we thought could be knit together to be a foundation for a cuisine, a cuisine for the 21st century. Not that “I know how you should cook,” but there’s a lot of information that professional and home cooks don’t know.
A tiny fraction of the chefs of the world have pioneered some amazing things, but their goal was to cook it, not disseminate it. This book can change the way anyone cooks, in any way one wants to cook. The number of chefs who have worked in one of these key restaurants…probably 80 percent of innovation is at maybe six restaurants. How many chefs truly understand the techniques? So we can expand that number by the thousands. My goal is that even Heston [Blumenthal, of The Fat Duck] or Ferran [Adria, of elBulli] would learn something from the book. I don’t mean to say “I taught them something.” But I did!
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