The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained + More Than 100 Essential Recipes

(Hardback)

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Description

Every time you cook, youre trying to hit just 6 notes: richness, brightness, depth, heat, saltiness, and sweetness. These are the flavours that make our food sing. When you cook and eat you rely on a variety of senses and feelings taste, sight, aroma, sound, mouthfeel, and emotion to perceive these sensations. In this groundbreaking cookbook from Nik Sharma, author of acclaimed cookbook Seasonand the award-winning A Brown Tableblog, we learn the simplest ways to play up any and all of these sensations for the most flavourful food. The compounds that cause these unique sensations are found in the simplest ingredients: lemons and limes, salt and pepper, pickles, cream, olive oil, and butter. These are the flavour-boosting building blocks on hand for splendid, simple cooking. Once home cooks learn how to evoke these sensations, theyll be able to make nearly anything delicious. The Flavour Equationpresents an in-depth exploration of the science of taste, with more than 100 illustrations for visual learners. Here, too, are 125 go-to recipes for favourite dishes curries, one-pot vegetarian mains, soups for cooks of all skill levels, with a photo of almost every recipe, in Niks trademark evocative and moody style. This is a hefty, must-own cookbook the next Food Labor Flavor Bible perfect for curious cooks of all levels who are learning the basics, need best-of-their-class recipes, and want to take their cooking to the next level.

Reviews

"The Flavor Equation is destined to be classic: original, thought-provoking, and illuminating. It is a book that will change the way you think about food and cooking, and will help to make all your other cookbooks make sense." -Nigella Lawson, author of At My Table
"In The Flavor Equation, Nik marries the art and science of cuisine. It offers a holistic approach to cooking at home; one that celebrates both chemistry and emotion, in both the creation and enjoyment of our meals." -Stella Parks, pastry chef and author of BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts
"Nik Sharma has created an irresistible book that makes you want to immediately jump in the kitchen. There is not a single recipe that I would not want to cook, I am dying to make them all! This book helps you understand the deep complexities that surround our food, and how much it can mean to us." -Pati Jinich, chef, cookbook author and host of PBS Pati's Mexican Table
"Some consider cooking to be a series of chemical and thermodynamic reactions, others see it as an embodiment of heart, emotion, culture, and family. In The Flavor Equation, Nik Sharma shows us how these elements-the brain and the heart-are not at odds with each other, but that they are in fact intimately intertwined. Understanding their interaction is the key to unlocking flavor in your own cooking, as Nik demonstrates in this beautiful and intelligent book." -J. Kenji Lpez-Alt, author The Food Lab and Chief Consultant for Serious Eats.com
"The Flavor Equation is written by someone who understands flavor first. This is not a book for geeks who want to deep dive into amino acids, gels, and osmosis. This is a book about how to turn out food that optimizes flavor. Nik Sharma and others are teaching us that good food is not about technique per se: years standing in front of the stove, advanced knife skills, and mastering pastry technique. It's about crafting flavor through an understanding of what flavor actually is." -Christopher Kimball, founder, Milk Street(from the foreword)
"As someone with his own obsession with flavor, I find Nik Sharma's take on it totally fascinating. It is deep and illuminating, fresh and highly informative. That, combined with his always-sumptuous food and staggering photographs, makes The Flavor Equation a most brilliant achievement." -Yotam Ottolenghi, chef and author of Jerusalem
"If you're interested in flavor-and every cook is, that's what we constantly think about-this book is for you. I haven't learned so much from a single book in a very long time. I'm now cooking my way through it." -Diana Henry, James Beard award-winning author of A Bird in the Hand
"Nik Sharma answers the hows and whys of taste from a scientific perspective as well as one from a well-seasoned cook. The multicultural flavors that are sure to entice anyone's taste buds to spring into action. Anyone wanting to take a deep dive into how to make food taste better will revel in Nik's thoroughly researched-and gorgeously photographed-treatise on the topic." -David Lebovitz, author, My Paris Kitchen and Drinking French
"Whatever your skill level in the kitchen, with its more than 100 recipes, illustrated diagrams, and Sharma's own evocative photography, The Flavor Equation is an engrossing guide to elevating simple dishes into holistic experiences." -Eater, Best New Cookbooks Fall 2020
As with his previous book, recipes are easy to follow and the photographs are mouth-watering. Helpful diagrams, charts, and illustrations are presented throughout. This book will appeal both to those who want to expand their Indian cooking repertoire and those who want to know more about the scientific background behind cooking itself.-Library Journal

Author Bio

Nik Sharma is the writer, photographer, and recipe developer behind A Brown Table, one of the most critically acclaimed food blogs and photojournals, and the author of Season, an NYT best cookbook in 2018. His meteoric rise in the food scene has brought him two IACP Digital Media Awards and a SaveurBest Food Blog Award finalist spot. Nik and his work have been the subject of a PBS documentary and an NPR feature on minorities in food, and he has written for or collaborated with Food52, America's Test Kitchen, Food & Wine,Williams Sonoma, Cosmopolitan,Design*Sponge, West Elm, KitchenAid, Le Creuset, and many others. Niks visual food column for the San Francisco Chronicle,A Brown Kitchen, debuted on the front page of the Food & Home section in July 2016 and runs weekly in both the print and digital editions. He also writes a column for Serious Eatson the science of flavour, which reaches millions of readers.