The book Cooking science – Condensed matter by Adria Vicenc came out last year, but only recently did it appear on my radar. This 75 page preview suggests that it is part coffee table book and part documentation of modern Catalan cuisine combined with short essays on various topics such as food preservation and synaesthetic cooking. Add to that a dash of technology and large photos and descriptions of a sous vide water bath, a rotary evaporator, a freeze drier etc. It’s kind of like a light version of Modernist Cuisine. In his introduction Ferran Adria states that: “As has happened throughout history in the majority of the stages of human evolution, the new technologies act as a support for the progress of cookery”. This is technology with a purpose: better food!
More information in Catalan, Spanish and English is available from the Materia Condensa website. The book features QR codes which lead to various digital resources (also available directly from the website).
The book features a periodic table of preserves (full resolution view available through this preview) which I’ve now added to my list of other food related periodic tables. Fun? Yes! Useful? Probably not…