Ex-Microsoft CTO Writes $625 Cookbook 176
carusoj writes "Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's first CTO, made his mark in the tech world. Now he's cemented his place in the world of cooking and food science with the publication of a groundbreaking six-volume, 2,438-page cookbook. Some of the techniques in Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine are intimidating, to put it mildly, calling for such daunting ingredients as liquid nitrogen and equipment such as centrifuges and rotor-stator homogenizers. But Myhrvold and his co-authors insist that the majority of recipes can be made in a conventional home kitchen — with a few recommended, inexpensive extras such as a digital gram scale and water bath for sous vide cooking." Dear Bosses: When you see the centrifuge on my March expense report, please note that this is a legitmate business expense. If you're still curious, we ran a story a couple years ago on Nathan's Kitchen Lab.
Re:digital gram scale as an extra? (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. If you can't do a least one tenth of a gram, you'll be back to volumetric measures for salt, spices, additives, etc. And while volumetric measure for them is generally more reliable than, say, flour, accuracy for them can be more important (as you mention). I think that hundredth of a gram is ideal, particularly if you're experimenting with smaller batches. Incidentally, just last night I needed to weigh spices in the range of 0.5 - 4 g. (I personally use an old digital lab balance precise to 1mg, but that's only because it was free; measurements better than 10mg aren't really feasible or worthwhile in the kitchen.)
I think the gram precision thing is more an issue of dynamic range... Most people are using their scales for weighing out flour, confectioners sugar, etc. These things are usually needed in the 500g range, and coupled with the weight of a measuring bowl, you need a scale that can handle 1kg or so. That means a gram scale needs a range of 0.1% and a hundredth gram scale would need 0.001%. That's expensive, and so most cooks would rather just buy something cheap for flour that does ~5g and stick with volumetric measure for spices. Of course, they could always get two scales, but that would be crazy ;).