On Food and Cooking
- 684
- Pages
- about 13 h
- Reading time
- James Beard Foundation Award
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Our view
“On Food and Cooking” is an absorbing kitchen reference that explains the science and the history behind what we cook and eat. Harold McGee treats the chemistry of the kitchen and its lore with equal enthusiasm, and the 2004 edition was thoroughly revised. At nearly seven hundred pages it is a book to consult rather than read straight through, and it rewards curious cooks of any age.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen is a book by Harold McGee, published by Scribner in the United States in 1984 and revised extensively for a second edition in 2004. It is published by Hodder & Stoughton in Britain under the title McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.8 across 81 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 36% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Rankings average of 7.8. That is how 8.2 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 9.1 | 9 | 11% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 26 | 32% |
| Hardcover | 9.3 | 46 | 57% |
