One of the must-read reference books for cooks and foodies is Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. He loves the science of food and how things change during cooking to become more delicious and this love shows in his writing style. Since I enjoyed that book so much I picked up his latest book, Nose Dive.
As you might expect from the title, it is all about the aromas that we smell, but rather than limiting it to just the world of food, he goes all the way back to the beginning of the universe and then takes us through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms to find out just what is creating all those smells we notice every day.
This book clearly took a lot of effort to write and the author enjoys describing the chemical pathways to each volatile substance. As he says in the book, it is better to treat the material as a reference although you could read straight through. I read through the first half completely, and then started picking and choosing the topics (and foods) that I was interested in during the second half.
For the most part the author writes in a very accessible and almost whimsical way – talking about the romance of the forest and volatile esters in the same breath. It was great to see him write about the topic with such enthusiasm, and that tended to help the reader through some of the more technical descriptions.
I really enjoyed this book for the most part, but if I had to point to something I didn’t like, I would say it was the question of what we should do now with the information that he has imparted. Now that I know the chemical name for the aromas of green leaf volatiles (hexenyl acetate) what do I do with that information? How do I use this to improve my cooking or get better at detecting it in the environment around me. Other than saying, “I detect notes of hexenyl acetate…” while sniffing my sauvignon blanc I think there are few chances outside a laboratory to use this knowledge. However at least understanding the chemical pathways that result in these aromas may be helpful in the future.
I’d really recommend this book on the shelf in a winemaker’s office or laboratory – it would have been handy while blending and assessing wines back when I worked in the industry. But for the current me this was an interesting reference book but not exactly casual reading material.
Next I’m reading Noise by Daniel Kahneman to look at how terrible my subjective judgements really are.
