Cooking Up a Tome

Nathan Myhrvold didn’t just write a cookbook,he wrote an encyclopaedia weighing 21 kilograms. An innovator by profession,Myhrvold,51,has never really done anything ordinary. His list of accomplishments is impressive — he is the founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures (IV),a firm dedicated to creating and investing in inventions,has four graduate degrees,has worked with Stephen Hawking on the quantum theory of gravity,was the first technology chief at Microsoft,and has applied for over 500 patents. Right before he began writing his monumental cooking instruction manual,Myhrvold got a degree from La Varenne,a prestigious French cooking school.

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking hasn’t just diversified the area of molecular gastronomy,it has set new standards. The 2,439-page,six-volume recipe book which took Myhrvold and his team three years to produce,has been published by The Cooking Lab and released in the US in early March. It will come to India in July. The book is being hailed as the definitive guide on the history of molecular gastronomy by critics and chefs worldwide.

Myhrvold’s team,which includes a chef of Indian origin,Anjana Shankar,conducted thousands of experiments with high-tech equipment,in their laboratory in Bellevue,Washington. The cookbook contains over 1,600 recipes,from prehistoric roasted meat to even edible dirt. There are also recipes for Indian curries,papad,ghee,paneer,and masala dosa.

Modernist Cuisine has an initial global press run of only 6,000 copies (which,if converted to kilos,would easily be close to a quarter of a million copies of a regular hardback). Even in India,with a price tag of Rs 30,000,this gigantic cookbook bible will have a very niche readership.

The purpose of the book,Myhrvold asserts,is not to become a best-seller — he calls cooking “an art,and not a craft that it is usually mistaken as”. It explores the art of cooking and is for those who have the time and the will to research; to indulge themselves in making a 30-hour mushroom Swiss cheeseburger with tomato confit,smoked lettuce and mushroom-based ketchup and carbonated mojitos

For the non-professional cook,there’s advice on how to improve your cooking skills,and busting of several urban myths. “About half of the recipes can be done in any well-equipped kitchen,” Myhrvold says in an e-mail interview. He firmly believes that ideas that began in high-end restaurants have,over time,trickled down to home kitchens. Eventually,the current techniques will also be more accessible. “The last 20 per cent of the book is more exotic,but I think that people will enjoy learning about it even if they do not do it. There are about 1,600 recipes; I think that even 50 per cent leaves plenty for the home cook”.

And here’s the punch line: the chef didn’t even get down to the desserts.