4. Ingredients & Preparations

Modern cooks use ingre­di­ents in ways ear­lier gen­er­a­tions would never have imag­ined, and new ingre­di­ents such as gelling and thick­en­ing agents, emul­si­fiers, and foams have found their way into every cor­ner of Modernist cui­sine. In its 400 pages, Volume 4 goes beyond tra­di­tional ingre­di­ents to explain thick­en­ers, gels, emul­sions, and foams—the real keys to both tra­di­tional and Modernist cook­ing at the high­est level.

Hundreds of para­met­ric recipes and exam­ple recipes—many adapted from the world’s most famous and inno­v­a­tive chefs—illuminate the best options for mak­ing clas­sic dishes, such as stocks and sauces, in mod­ern ways and for prepar­ing Modernist cre­ations that go well beyond what clas­si­cal tech­niques can pro­duce. Noodles made of gel, feather-light foams, mus­sles in trans­par­ent spheres of their own brine, egg­less may­on­naise ... the chap­ters in this vol­ume unlock doors and point the way to end­less possibilities.

In keep­ing with the highly illus­trated approach the authors have taken else­where in the book, each tricky step is not just described but also shown, through thou­sands of pho­tographs. Step by step, photo by photo, read­ers who learned in vol­ume 3 how to make the per­fect ham­burger patty (it’s all in the grind­ing) now see how to pre­pare per­fect slices of their favorite cheese to top it. Ever want to infuse liq­uid smoke into let­tuce or noo­dles? Or cook an egg to the per­fect cus­tard tex­ture? The instruc­tions are all there. Volume 4 includes para­met­ric for­mu­las, illus­trated step-by-step tech­niques, and exam­ple recipes for:

  1. whole, pick­led, and pre­served eggs;
  2. cus­tards; blended and sep­a­rated egg gels;
  3. tofus and other pro­tein curds;
  4. cold gels, coat­ing gels, hot gels, and fluid gels;
  5. using pre­hy­drated starches and hydro­col­loids to thicken hot and cold liquids;
  6. mak­ing milks and creams;
  7. mak­ing edi­ble films;

and many, many more.