Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

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have put in too much. Indeed, a chef friend asked
me, “Do you really need all that material in there?”
My answer was to throw the question back at him:
“Tell me, do you really need that many courses on
your tasting menu?” The point is, what does need
have to do with any of this? High-end cooking is
about delighting both the chef and the diner; it’s
not about delivering the minimum daily requirements
of nutrition. Similarly, books like these are
meant to provide far more than the basics of
culinary technique.
A strange phenomenon seems to occur when
many top chefs publish books. These chefs have
made their reputations by refusing to make
compromises with their food, yet for their cookbooks
they choose paper that isn’t terribly nice,
with limited photos and relatively low-quality
printing. The recipes are often dumbed down and
oversimplified. The no-compromise chef winds up
with a book that has compromises on every page.
How can that make sense?
Often the reason this happens is that publishing
executives tell chefs they have to compromise,
and the chefs believe them. That’s because
publishers want to make low-end to midrange
books; they think these are what will sell best.
Maybe the publishers are right, but one has to
wonderit’s like saying that cheap restaurants
are more popular. The publisher is trying to make
a book that is analogous to McDonald’s or, at
best, to a steakhouse chain. If publishers suggested
that the chef change her restaurant in the
same wayaim for lower quality, drop prices,
eliminate expensive ingredientsthey’d get
thrown out on their ears.
Rightly or wrongly, we have taken the nocompromise
approach with this book, believing
that if we create something we love and are proud
of, at least some people will value it the way we
do. Maybe we’re making a big mistake, but only
time will tell.
Our book has plenty of extras, such as historical
information, which isn’t necessary in a strict sense.
This information is like a garnish on the plateit
adds something of interest to the dish even if it isn’t
the primary focus. Yes, you can serve food without
a garnish, and we could have omitted the history to
make the work a bit smaller, but as you can clearly
see, smaller was not high on our list of goals.
Indeed, the size of this book, the number of
pictures it contains, and the labor that went into it,
force it to carry a high price tagat least compared
to other books. Unfortunately, most people have
been trained to expect books to be very cheap, and
this colors how they view the price of a book.
But look at it this way: this book is likely to cost
about as much as dinner for two at a top restaurant.
At the very best restaurants, its price would
probably only cover the food, without wine, tip, or
tax; for restaurants that are a little less expensive,
that price might buy dinner for four.
To me, that doesn’t sound like a bad value. After
all, by the next morning, dinner is just a fond
memory. Don’t get me wrong; I love dinner at
a great restaurant. But like a concert or a play, it
lasts only so long. Its most enduring legacy is
probably a bit of weight gain, as in the old saying:
“a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”
This book, in contrast, teaches techniques that
can be used to make an enormous variety of
different recipes and dishes. You can refer to it
again and again for years. (Indeed, it may take you
years to get through it.) Why isn’t the knowledge
and information in it just as valuable as the
transitory (albeit wonderful) experience of dining
once in a great restaurant?
Continuing with the restaurant analogy, if all
you are used to paying for is a McDonald’s Extra
Value Meal, then a night at Per Se or L’Arpège
seems extremely pricey. Because publishers so
often end up compromising quality to hit a price
point, most cookbooks are priced somewhere
between the Extra Value Meal and dinner at
a midrange restaurant chain. Most cookbooks
published in the U.S. cost from $15 to $40, with
a few at $50 and virtually none over $75.
The perception in the publishing world is that
the market won’t support anything more expensive,
but that is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s like surveying restaurants and saying, “Look,
most establishments are fast-food joints or stripmall
diners; therefore, nothing else is possible.”
That pricing philosophy is perfectly appropriate
for publishers and authors who truly embrace it.
We decided that we could not create the book we
wanted on that kind of budgetjust as Per Se and
L’Arpège have decided that to achieve the level of
quality they are interested in, they need to charge
more than McDonald’s or the strip-mall diner.
Another criticism people may have of this book
is that the material is too complicated for readers
to understand. We made a rule that we wouldn’t
dumb down the content. We have tried to make
the text as easy to understand as possible, and we
have gone to great lengths to illustrate the content
with photos and to lay out the key information in
an accessible and engaging way. We hope you’ll
agree. Of course, you can always skip the science
and go right to the step-by-step techniques and
recipes. We have tried to make the material
self-contained enough that you can either take the
full-Monty approach and learn it all or cherry-pick
the techniques you want to use.
The no-dumbing-down rule means that some
techniques shown in this book require equipment
not found in the average kitchen. Indeed, no
restaurant in the world owns the full set of tools
and technologies we show; there are few kitchens
in the world other than research laboratories that
would have all the equipment to make everything.
We chose to cover this specialized equipment
for two reasons. First, there are plenty of other
techniques and recipes that can be done without a
centrifuge, freeze dryer, spray dryer, or other exotic
gadget. Second, we think that people are curious
about how these tools work and will enjoy learning
about them, even if they don’t have them at home.
You might wonder whether this book is meant
for professional chefs or for home chefs. My reply
is, I am a home chef! And yes, I have used almost all
of the techniques we discuss in my home kitchen at
one point or another. Admittedly, mine is a rather
special home kitchen, but many of our recipes can
be used with little or no unusual equipment.
The word “amateur” comes from the Latin root
amare, which means to love. Amateurs cook for
the love of food and the process of preparing it, but
the truth is that most professional chefs also cook
for the love of it. Anyone who loves food will find
much to like in this book, regardless of whether or
not they cook for a living. We pull no punches in
explaining how to create both high-end and highly
Photographer Ryan Matthew Smith with
a fiber optics strobe light used to light
some of the pictures in the book.
86 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
HISTORY 87