First Peek at Building a Meal by Herve This

We are very excited to report that the new Hervé This book, Building a Meal, is rolling-out world-wide over the next two weeks. To whet your appetite we give you a short excerpt from the preface of the book.

This book grew out of conversations with my friend Marie-Odile Monchicourt, a science journalist, portions of which I have reproduced here in order to strike a more personal and informal tone than would otherwise be possible. My purpose is to examine the various elements of our culinary heritage (recipes, principles, adages, time-honored practices, acquired skills, tricks of the cook’s trade, dictums, maxims, and so on), to scrutinize familiar assumptions, observe phenomenon, and search for the mechanisms that underlie them. My aim is not to destroy or deconstruct our traditional ideas about cooking, but rather to renew a heritage: the cooking that we have inherited from the past and that has gone unquestioned for centuries. What should we conserve from the past? What can we do without in the future? What can we transform and improve? Science can help us answer these questions.

Science never ceases to arouse our curiosity, to nourish our minds with fresh insights, and to make us look at nature and the world around us in new ways. As the universal language of conviviality, it can guide us in exploring cooking and changing the way we think about food – a revolution in which every one of us can take part!

The meal the book builds consists of six dishes:
Appetizers:
Hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise
Simple consommé
Main courses:
Leg of lamb with green beans
Steak and French fries
Desserts:
Lemon meringue pie
Futuristic chocolate mousse

We’ll be posting lots more about this exciting book in the coming weeks!