Challenges traditional ideas about cooking and eating. This book examines and debunks a variety of time-honored rules and dictums about cooking and presents ways of preparing a variety of dishes from quiches and quenelles to steak and hard-boiled eggs.

Examining the molecular properties of bread, ham, foie gras, and champagne, the book analyzes what happens as they are baked, cured, cooked, and chilled. Looking to the future, This imagines new cooking methods and proposes novel dishes. A chocolate mousse without eggs? A flourless chocolate cake baked in the microwave? "Molecular Gastronomy" explains how to make them. This also shows us how to cook perfect French fries, why a souffle rises and falls, how long to cool champagne, when to season a steak, the right way to cook pasta, how the shape of a wine glass affects the taste of wine, why chocolate turns white, and how salt modifies tastes.