Modernist Cuisine will be inducted into the Gourmand Hall of Fame of Cookbooks during the Paris Cookbook Fair on March 3, 2011. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, a unique international competition for the book sector that this year drew the participation of publishers in 154 countries, has named Modernist Cuisine the most important cookbook of the first ten years of the 21st century.

“If Leonardo da Vinci was alive today, he would write a cookbook called The Codex of Cooking,” said Edouard Cointreau, the President of the Gourmand Awards. “This cookbook exists at last. It is Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.”

The book was written by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold with Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, all respected scientists, prolific inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own rights. Bilet will receive the award in Paris on behalf of the team.

“Nathan, Chris, and I are thrilled that Modernist Cuisine is being hailed as such a significant culinary publication,” says Bilet. “We are very proud of the book and are honored to be recognized among the world’s leading culinary authors.” The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards adds only one book every year to its Hall of Fame, and Modernist Cuisine is just the tenth book to receive this high honor.

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a six-volume, 2,438-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, and centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. Modernist Cuisine is a work destined to reinvent cooking.

The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards were founded in 1995 by Edouard Cointreau to honor those who “cook with words,” and to help readers and retailers find the best food and wine books published worldwide.

For more information, visit https://modernistcuisine.com/contact.