Nathan Myhrvold's $500 Cookbook Now an $80 iPhone App 193
Nathan Myhrvold's six-volume foodie encyclopedia, Modernist Cuisine, writes reader SmartAboutThings, is one of the most expensive cooking encyclopedias, the original six-volume version retailing for $500, with the two-volume addition that followed after that selling for $115. "Now, Nathan and his team have transformed their huge food encyclopedia into
an iPhone/iPad app. It's not just a digital book, but rather an expensive $80 interactive app that can do more than just provide recipes. The interactive digital cookbook is the fruit of a development team of 10-15 people that have worked over nine months on the project. The app contains 37 technique videos, 416 recipes and 1,683 photos."
More hype? (Score:5, Insightful)
Among the top features that the Modernist Cuisine app comes with are the high-resolutions pictures and the ability to search within the app's own information which will also fetch extra data from Wikipedia and other web services.
Wow, an app that can search its own information! And use that cool web resources like Wikipedia!
As someone who admired the photography from the original book, though, the high-res photography is awesome.
Unfortunately, that's about all the book was good for, at least unless you're some professional chef with a large budget and a bunch of fancy equipment. I find it hilarious that TFA makes it sound like a regular cooking and recipe app:
the recipe cards dynamically adjust the measure of ingredients you'll need to yield a given number of servings, then add these items to a shopping list.
Have people even looked at the book? The exotic ingredients used in many recipes aren't exactly the sort of things you can find at your typical supermarket. Even if you have the centrifuge and other fancy equipment needed to prepare some things, you're going to have to special order a lot of ingredients... not just pack your iPhone in your purse and head off to the grocery store.
The hype for this book was huge, with people claiming that it revolutionize the way we would cook and introduce a whole new "scientific" approach to cooking. That was complete nonsense -- it's more about fancy technology and fancy ingredients, with lots of fun pictures. If you like $600 coffee-table books, by all means, get a copy... or maybe get the photos for a steal in an $80 iPad app.
I know I'm a dissenting voice on this book, but all the blather about using "science" in cooking really bothered me. I'm actually the scientific type of cook -- I have many digital thermometers, scales, a pH meter, and many other precision devices, along with a "lab notebook" (journal) of my kitchen "experiments."
But this book is more about presenting pretentious culinary "culture" that uses lots of technology as if it were "science." That's not science. It's just somebody's wacky cooking vision. I'm not saying the food is bad, but claiming that their approach is "better" is rarely backed up by any data... therefore, it's hardly "scientific."
Anyhow, I could go on about this for some time, and already have here [amazon.com]. But from my experience with this book, I'm a little hesitant about recommending the $80 app, unless you just like paying that much for a lot of pretty pictures.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Much like books on technical/theoretical software topics, even though the information is out there and relatively accessible sometimes it's nice to have it all together in a consistent and well thought out collection. Yes there's a tonne of easily available perl resources on the net, but the camel book guides you from start to finish at a consistent pace, using consistent terminology, etc..
I have the two volume set, and it's nice (posting AC, so by all means assume I'm a paid shill).
I do agree that this isn't really newsworthy from a technical perspective and probably doesn't belong here.
Re:Its free over (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Another slashvertizement! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:alternatively (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you get a basic recipe from allrecipes.com (most of them just mediocre, I bet there are only a few gems that would be just as good/better than a 5 star restuarant). It is one thing reading a recipe and following, but do you know WHY they use the method they choose, why one food reacts with a different one the way it does.
Proper technique also makes a huge difference. I could put a handful ingredients along with a recipe on your counter, and exact same ingredients with exact same recipe on a professional chefs, and I pretty much guarantee you the professional chefs will taste better.
Also, how many typical home cooks are using sous vide technique to cook their meat, using liquid nitrogen for desserts, using a centrifuge to make beef stock. This set of books also use a ton of ingredients that you would not find at your local grocery store, or even a local specialty store, I bet quite a few need to be special ordered.
I am not saying you need to be a professional chef to make good food, of course not, nor do you need to know all of the techniques, or have all the crazy equipment. I was just stating this volume of books is not just your typical $10 recipe book that you find on amazon.
Re:alternatively (Score:4, Insightful)
There is actually a separate edition of the book called Modernist Cuisine at Home [modernistcuisine.com] which is specifically tailored to home chefs who want to try out the techniques, for substantially less money than the full version. Actually, the ebook which is the topic of the article is based on the "at Home" edition, which means the price differential between the ebook and dead tree version is only about thirty bucks, not several hundred.