The challenge
While cooking can be an art, science underlies just about everything that happens when we change our food to prepare it for consumption. In the early 2000s, as the idea of using things like gels, foams and laboratory equipment started taking off with some segments of the cooking world, the ability to replicate that science was out of reach for the curious home chef.
The solution
In 2011, Hertz Fellow Nathan Myhrvold was principal author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Clocking in at five volumes, 2,438 pages and 52 pounds, it included more than 1,500 recipes with more than 3,700 photos to illustrate the science written about in the book. Myhrvold wanted to help readers who were interested in modern styles of cooking, even if it was more of a curiosity than a passion.
It might seem an odd turn for the former chief technology officer of Microsoft (he took leave from his job to study at École de Cuisine La Varenne), but it worked.
“Bread may seem simple, but, in fact, it is highly technological and scientific — it’s actually a biotech product whose creation requires harnessing the power of microorganisms that ferment.”
Nathan Myhrvold
Founder and CEO, Intellectual Ventures
THE IMPACT
In 2012, Modernist Cuisine won two James Beard Foundation Awards: one for cookbook of the year, and one for cooking from a professional point of view. The set also won three International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Awards, and an induction into the Gourmand Cookbook Hall of Fame. Then, in 2018, Myhrvold also won again with co-author Francisco Migoya for Restaurant and Professional for Modernist Bread, which also had five volumes and was of similar scope and size.
