Rating: 
Summary: A Patient Teacher
Review: McGee is a patient and erudite teacher who makes things about as simply as possible for the strictly non-tech types like myself. Essential food reference.
Rating:
Summary: Knowledge is power
Review: My copy is dog-eared and worn. It is written in. Passages are highlighted. This book has the answers for anyone who loves food and has a curiousity about how things work and why. What is wonderful is the author has written this book for the common man as well as the professional. It belongs not only in the library of anyone associated with the food industry but also anyone who loves to cook. With Harold McGee at your elbow, why things happen in the kitchen and how to fix them just became easier. This book, like a great recipe is complex and yet oh so simple.
Rating: 
Summary: The "Lore" obscures the "Science", and vice-versa
Review: The many flaws in this book originally led me to give it 3 stars, but the more I look at other sources for the same information, the more I realize that for all its annoying qualities, this book really does appear to be the most comprehensive work on this subject. As such, I have to recommend it more highly, simply because you're not going to get the same infomation in any other single book. Be prepared to work hard for the knowledge, however."On Food and Cooking" is a very comprehensive work that contains a lot of very useful and interesting information. It also contains a lot of less useful information, random historical musings, and general digressions. As a result, the useful/interesting information density is much lower than I'd like, particularly given the general "verbiage density" of the text. Perhaps part of the problem is that I've gleaned too much of the information already from other sources, so that I feel like I'm wading through a lot of common knowledge to get to the bits I care about. The book goes into a fair amount of historical detail about various ingredients. It doesn't focus on the historical aspects enough to be a "history of food" book, though, and the historical perspective tends to detract from the scientific content ratio simply by increasing the overall amount of text. Also, there are many variations on ingredients, food safety issues, etc., that were not considered significant in 1983, but which are more relevant today. There's no discussion of salmonella in the section on eggs, for example, and no discussion of things like the impact (or lack thereof) of RBGH on milk quality. The effects of organic methods in general are given short shrift. I have observed various quality differences in organic ingredients relative to more conventional ingredients (both for better and for worse), and had hoped for some quantitative discussion of what the physical differences are, and why. Compared to "The Science of Cooking" (my most recent read on the topic), this book doesn't cover some of the physics and organic chemistry as well, but it does go into better detail on some of the more biologically oriented topics. For example, osmotic pressure, the process by which salt and sugar preserve food, is covered fairly well in this book, while it is never directly mentioned in "The Science of Cooking". I also wish there had been better organization of the material in the book. "The Science of Cooking", for example, is organized like a textbook, with well-marked side bars and tables, allowing you to easily skip to (or over) information that may or may not be relevant. "On Food and Cooking", however, is organized more like a novel, making it difficult to use it for reference, and complicating efforts to skip over material that is not of interest. Also, some sections (for example the discussion of cheese) assume too much knowledge about the basic processes, making it sometimes challenging to correlate the underlying chemistry with actual kitchen mechanics. In general, the book has very few examples of "kitchen experiments" you can try yourself to develop an integrated sense of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of cooking. There are many discussions, for example, of the effects of pH on various processes, but little discussion of ways to manipulate the pH using different ingredients to help balance flavor against the needs of the chemical processes. I still haven't found the ideal source for this sort of information. "The Science of Cooking" is at least concise and very clear in what it does cover (which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 3), but as I look back and compare it to "On Food and Cooking" again, I see some of the major holes in that book (which doesn't deal with the role of pH in cooking at all, for example). And so, my search continues.
Rating:
Summary: Best book for every "why" question in the kitchen.
Review: This book condenses volumes of useful and interesting knowledge into a very readable and understandable language. With the knowledge in this book, one could literally move from a casual cook to a professional. Rather than recipes, it tells why and when different processes work and/or do not work. It is science for the cook.
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Summary: Unveils culinary questions to a new minutia... Great!!!
Review: This book encompasses three of my great passions: History, Science & Food/Cooking. With a very scientific voice explaining the interactions of cooking at a molecular level, the author easily draws you in to any topic from pickeling to fermentation. You can open this book to any page and learn about the foods you enjoy and where they come from -- both historically and chemically. I love this book!!!!
Rating:
Summary: I eat, therefore I am
Review: This book gives Totally Too Much Information (TTMI) to be read in one sitting. (Danger, Will Robinson! Information overload!) Like how one feels towards the end of Thanksgiving dinner! In a pinch, it may also be used to "boost" shorter members of the family up to the table ;-) Mr. McGee's tome should be savored in digestible, bite-sized morsels. Read it while cooking up a big feast or nuking a quick snack. There is an excellent Index in which the reader may browse for specific items. As the author explains in the Introduction: "This is not a book of cookery - it offers no expert recipes - it is meant [to explain] the nature of our foods, what they are made of and where they came from, how they are transformed by cooking, when and why particular culinary habits took hold. Chemistry and biology figure prominently in this approach, but science is by no means the whole story. History, anthropology, and etymology also contribute to our understanding of food and cooking." This is an essential treatise on the *science* - not art - of cooking. It explores *how* the traditional techniques (recipes and routines) work. We might have known the principle, but never put it together in the concept of Kitchen. For instance: that ugly "skin" when heating milk or reheating a cappuccino: "Whether fluid milk is used to make a soup or a sauce, scalloped potatoes or hot chocolate, the tendency of its proteins to coagulate can cause problems. The skin that forms on the surface of boiled milk or cream soups is a complex of casein and calcium and results from evaporation of water at the surface and the subsequent concentration of protein there." To me, this is WAY more palatable than that Organic Chem 101 text with which I happily parted years ago. Better living through [cooking] chemistry!
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Summary: Interesting Science Education for your Family
Review: This book is about both science and food. Excellent tool for teaching yourself some science and engaging your kids in science exploration in your kitchen of your own home. If you think that this book is "too technical for the average cook", as stated by one of the reviewers below, you probably need to go back to school to get yourself some decent education.
Rating: 
Summary: Way too technical for the average cook!
Review: This book is much more about science than cooking. The content is much more technical than most readers will desire (as with, the discussion of the molecular structure of milk in its various states).
Rating:
Summary: Rigorous, but understandable.
Review: This book is NOT a cookbook, but it's a damned good reference for figuring out why your sauce was flat. I first received this book from a friend, about 3 years ago. I read it, then re-read it, and was amazed that the technical references and jargon were so easily described. As a chemical engineer by trade and a cook by avocation, I loved this book, both for the technical details and the writing, as well as the explanations of the science behind the "obvious". If you're a technically-inclined person, you'll appreciate the references and notes. If you, like some unnamed previous reviewers, are looking for an easy guide to food, this isn't it. This book appeals to cooks who know how to make things, but want to know why those things are made. This isn't a compendium of recipes, nor is it a guide to cooking. It's an easily understandable review of why foods do what they do. If you enjoy cooking and wonder why "browning" makes a tastier dish, get this book. Nothing here is a surprise to the seasoned cook. There are no de rigueur recipes. Whatever.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent source for the science behind kitchen lore.
Review: This book is without peer in the descriptions of what happens on the chemical level as food cooks and is stored. The discussions include useful sections on beer, wine and coffee. There are also discussions of nutritional effects of food processing, cooking, and storage, as well as the mysteries of flatulence associated with certain foods, and other medical effects of greater consequence. The approach is lighthearted but has a surprising amount of scientific detail.
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