There are certain venerable research tomes one treasures, dipping into them again and again to browse and to learn. On Food and Cooking: The Science Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee has served as underground bible for chefs and those curious about food since it first appeared in 1984 (updated 2004.) It is not a recipe book, but rather a close examination of the structure and origins and attributes of the whole panoply of foodstuffs we humans consume. Beginning with mother’s milk and the surrogate animals that the ancients realized could turn grassland into dairy richness, he describes the glands that produce it, its chemistry, why it looks as it does, how it tastes and nourishes, why it curdles or ferments or poisons, why cheeses and curds work and hold. Always McGee writes with erudition and elegance. He proceeds thoroughly, plumbing history and science with an aesthete’s appreciation of aroma and taste and organic bonding.

Next he discusses eggs, the other Ur animal entity-- how its proteins behave to bind or crumble, why their gloss or opacity, the richness and texture they impart to other foods, the aspect of their molecular structure that captures air pockets when beaten and enables baked goods to rise and lighten. He treats meats and fish, corms and stalks and leaves and fruits. Why does pickling work, and curing? How have humans devised means to digest the stubborn cellulose walls of plants? Why are plants not meaty (because they stay put self-sufficiently with a toehold to suck minerals and moisture,and have their own mini factory leaves to transform sunlight and gases into sugars and carbohydrates, so they don’t need the muscles that parasitic animals require to roam for their food.)

McGee's section on breads explores how western Asia and Europe came to transform a gritty indigestible paste of hard grains and water into the fragrant, airy staff of life by means of kneading and heat and harnessing the mysterious power of sour and yeasts and time to rise. The English “Lord” and “Lady”, he points out, derive from Anglo-Saxon hlaford, “loaf ward”, the master who supplies food, and hlaefdige, “loaf kneader”, the person whose retinue produces what her husband distributes.

His lengthy discussion of grapes to wine particularly fascinates. It turns out that the type of container in use during particular historical eras, its closure or tensile strength, explains why vintage aging obtained in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, disappeared as an option for a thousand years, then re-emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries. The ancients stored wine in airtight clay amphoras. Vessels found in pharaonic tombs classify quality, year of production, and vintner as we do today. Late in the Roman period, however, wood barrels from northern Europe displaced amphoras because they were easier to handle and move. Oxygen crept in through their rough rag or peg closures, corrupted the wine, and rendered lengthy storage and aging impossible until the invention of slim glass bottles (that could lie on their side) and corks (which, constantly wetted, sealed tight.) Technical improvements such as high temperature, coal-fired glass trumped the old wood-fired version for strength, enabling fermentation to finish within a sealed bottle—champagne.

The real delight of Mr. McGee’s 884 page treatise, however, is just to open it at random anywhere, and read. His great depth, scope, grace, humor, the overarching historical context he explores from primeval to modern day, his etymological cues and explanation of molecular processes and enablements, his taste and acumen is food for the brain.