A Life through Food: Harold McGee
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Harold McGee, the man who helped explain the science of the kitchen, tells his food story. His book, published in 1984, On Food and Cooking, has influenced home cooks as well as a new generation of experimental chefs.
It's seen as an important book because it made the science of food accessible and understandable to domestic cooks and chefs. It explains what happens to the protein molecules in eggs when they're whisked and what unfolds in the fibres of meat when heated.
However, in the programme Harold McGee argues that his book revived kitchen science rather than introduced it. He cites figures including the 18th century Lord Rumford (an early experimenter in slow cooking) and Nicholas Kurti (a Hungarian born Oxford physicist) as the true pioneers of a more scientific approach to cooking.
Presenter: Sheila Dillon. Producer: Dan Saladino.
Transcript
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| 0:06.4 | Every day on newscast we dissect the big talking points, |
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| 0:29.0 | Newscast, listen on BBC Science. If you're documenting tipping points in food history, it's not often you find a |
| 0:47.8 | cowboy film as a trigger. But this part of the story began on celluloid horseback. It's the 1970s. |
| 1:05.0 | the 1970s. The cowboy comedy, blazing saddles is on release. |
| 1:10.0 | Everyone's cracking up over its most famous scene. |
| 1:12.0 | A group of cowboys sitting around a campfire, |
| 1:15.0 | eating and creating a symphony not often caught on film. |
| 1:19.0 | And watching it was a young man from Illinois. |
| 1:22.0 | I had had the idea of writing was a young man from Illinois. |
| 1:23.0 | I had had the idea of writing a book about the science of foods and cooking, |
| 1:29.5 | and I told my friends, my potluck dinner friends about this idea just to see what they thought. |
| 1:37.0 | And one of them was from New Orleans and he loved red beans and rice. |
| 1:42.0 | So he immediately said, I have a question for you. |
| 1:45.0 | It's a very practical one. |
| 1:46.4 | Can you tell me why beans give people trouble? |
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