Can you tell whether a recipe will work before you cook it? You can if you really know what's cooking.

In the long-awaited CookWise, food sleuth Shirley Corriher tells you how and why things happen in cooking. When you know how to estimate the right amount of baking powder, you can tell by looking at the recipe that the cake is overleavened and may fall. When you know that too little liquid for the amount of chocolate in a recipe can cause the chocolate to seize and become a solid grainy mass, you can spot chocolate truffle recipes that will be a disaster. And, in both cases, you know exactly how to "fix" the recipe. Knowing how ingredients work, individually and in combination, will not only make you more aware of the cooking process, but transform you into a confident and exceptional cook -- a cook who is in control.

CookWise is a different kind of cookbook. There are over 230 outstanding recipes -- from Snapper Fingers with Smoked Pepper Tartar Sauce to Chocolate Stonehenge Slabs with Cappuccino Mousse -- but here each recipe serves not only to please the palate but to demonstrate the roles of ingredients and techniques. A What This Recipe Shows section summarizes the special cooking points being demonstrated in each recipe. This little bit of science in everyday language indicates which steps or ingredients are vital and cannot be omitted without consequences.

Among the recipes you'll also find some surprises. Don't be afraid of a vinaigrette prepared without vinegar or a high-egg-white, crisp pate a choux. Many of the concepts used here are Shirley's own. Try her method of sprinkling croissant or puff pastry dough with ice water before folding to keep it soft and easy to roll.

CookWise covers everything from the rise and fall of cakes, through unscrambling the powers of eggs and why red cabbage turns blue during cooking but red peppers don't, to the essential role of crystals in making fudge. Want to learn about what makes a crust flaky? Try the Big-Chunk Fresh Apple Pie in Flaky cheese Crust. Discover for yourself what brining does to poultry in Juicy Roast Chicken.

No matter what your cooking level, you'll find CookWise a revelation. Different people will use CookWise in different ways:

• Home cooks will value CookWise as a collection of extraordinarily good recipes.
• The busy chef can use CookWise as a reference book to look up and solve problems. Major headings are shown in the Contents and 42 At-a-Glance summary charts make problem solving quick and easy
• Beginning cooks can use CookWise as a howto book with easy-to-follow recipes that produce dishes looking and tasting like the work of an experienced chef.
• Food writers and test-kitchen chefs who are developing recipes can find the formulas and tips for successful recipes,
• Anyone who wants to improve a recipe can use CookWise as a guide. Here is how to make cakes moister, a pate A choux drier and crisper, a dish lighter or darker in color; how to make muffins peak better, cookies spread less, or a roast chicken juicier.
• Everyone who cooks needs to be able to spot bad recipes and save the time, money, and frustration that they cause. Many of the At-a-Glance charts point out specific problems.

CookWise is not only informative, it's engrossing, and many sections react like a mystery story. The knowledge you gain from its pages will transform you, too, into a food sleuth, an informed and assured cook who can track down why sauces curdle or why the muffins were dry -- a cook who will never prepare a failed recipe again!

The primary value of the book is not that it explains mysteries of cooking technique, but that it explains them so well. I just finished a review of a book that attempted to explain the difference between saturated, mono-unsaturated, and poly-unsaturated fats, and it made a complete botch of the job. Shirley's explanation is so clear, it embarrasses you into having dozed through that lesson in high school. In fact, Shirley's book gives the clearest possible argument I have seen in a long time for justifying subjects like physics and chemistry in High School for people who plan to go into law or computer sciences or hair dressing. Everyone must eat. Therefore, everyone must either cook or rely on someone to cook for them. And, no sass about a raw cuisine either, because understanding what the absence of heat does to foods is as important as the application of heat.

My first very pleasant surprise when I started this book is that the first two chapters deal with baking subjects rather than savory cooking. And, I have read many an essay in the beginning of books on baking, and not a single one of them explains the mysteries of wheat flour, yeast, gluten, and bread making quite as well as Shirley's first chapter. Even Shirley's very good friend, Rose Levy Beranbaum does not tell the story quite as effectively. (No reason to pass on Beranbaum's books, however, she covers the whole picture very, very well.) The legendary star of the first chapter is Shirley's grandmother's `Touch-of-Grace Biscuits' on pages 77 - 78. James Villas has done a whole book on biscuits and intimates that none of his recipes quite reach the heights of this one spectacular biscuit. Shirley repeats this performance in the second chapter on pastry and piecrusts. One of the many lessons in this chapter which make you wish you had read this book years ago is the connection between creaming butter and sugar and the lightness of the resulting baked product. I won't give away the punch line. You should read the book.

The end of chapter has a section explaining fats and their role in cooking and baking which alone is worth the price of the book and so much more. The section begins by simply reviewing all the advantageous things fats do for various types of cooking, and various methods for reducing the amount of fat in various cooking methods. It is essential that this section be read in the light of the fact that we simply cannot live without some dietary fat as a source of fat soluble vitamins and other stuff, so don't get carried away with fat reduction.

Lots of people do not bake, but there is probably not a soul on the planet, or a least a soul within these United States who does not have the opportunity to cook or eat eggs. The nutritional value versus cost for eggs is staggering, and, it is probably the ingredient whose use depends more on technique than any other. And, this is even before you get into graduate level dishes such as souffles and omelets. One of my greatest revelations as I have been teaching myself cooking is the fact that egg foams are one of the three major leaveners, along with yeasts and chemical mixtures. Needless to say, this chapter covers the reason for beating eggs in a copper bowl. You must get the details on this, as no one to my knowledge has explained the effect completely before, let alone the reason for the effect. All you get from everyone else is that it's a good thing for fluffy egg foams.

The chapter on sauces presents the benefits of knowledge to cooking technique like no other. One of the most annoying errors speakers and writers make on things culinary is when they use the term dissolve to mean so many other things such as `incorporate', `mix', and especially `emulsify'. The whole world of French sauces would simply not be possible without the emulsifying power of eggs and butter. And, you will generally fail at even the simplest sauces unless you have some basic understandings on these matters built into your psyche. I'm not saying that French chef's are taught the physics of emulsions, because they don't need to. They are taught the proper techniques and repeat them a thousand times over until they can do it in their sleep. You will make a hollandaise or a mayonnaise or a buerre blanc two or three times a year, and have to study the recipe every time you make any of these, so any book learning you can get will make up for a lot of practice.

I hope Alton Brown has paid Shirley well for her appearances on `Good Eats', as I can see at least half a dozen of his shows which seem to be lifted straight from the pages of `Cookwise'. Ultimately, I rate this book even higher for the average reader than books by Harold McGee, as Shirley does a much better at explaining the connection between science and the practical application. I dare say she seems to do it as well or better than my hero, Alton.

Very highly recommended for enhancing your cooking and baking experience. A bit steep for complete novices, but `Cooks Illustrated' fans will be as happy as pigs in ...'.


Scientific knowledge - yes. Recipes - no.   May 9, 2002
 174 out of 214 found this review helpful

Let me say at the start that I highly respect Ms. Corriher. If you care about quality cooking and buy cookbooks by authors who truly know their stuff (and these are in the minority), you have seen her quoted and referred to many times. She DOES know what she's talking about. However, I simply don't care for any of her recipes that I have tried. For example, her cakes are overly sweet (which she admits to up front) for my taste and there's not much variety. In giving tips about chocolate chip cookies, she tells you how to make thin and crispy versions or thicker, chewy ones--but to get her cookies thick and chewy, she replaces butter with Crisco. Her science is flawless, but the cookies are quite dull since Crisco does not impart the wonderful flavor that butter does. Turn to Cooks Illustrated (Ms. Corriher also advises their staff) to learn how get thick, chewy cookies using all butter. I found similar examples throughout the book. Her science is sound, and this book is definitely valuable for it, but sometimes flavor and texture are compromised to achieve it. I guess it's just a matter of individual taste.

Also, this book is very cluttered and ill-organized. Recipes are interrupted by charts and information pertaining to other subjects or recipes, and it's hard to just turn to a page and quickly find what you are looking for since there's so much stuff crammed onto each page. It's hard to believe that an editor even looked at this thing, with the result that it is one of the ugliest and hard-to-use cookbooks I have ever seen.


Comparison: McGee, Corriher and Brown   October 27, 2007
 79 out of 79 found this review helpful

I've now read from cover to cover Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen," Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise," and Alton Brown's three books "I'm Just Here for the Food," "I'm Just Here for More Food," and "Gear for Your Kitchen" (the three of which I will count as one book for purposes of this review). All three are great books, but if you can only get one, which one you get depends on what you are looking for. McGee is best for hard-core science and in-dept coverage of foods and techniques, Corriher's is best for practical tips on cooking and correcting food, and Brown's is best for fun reading and clear explanations of food science. My personal preference is for the McGee book, followed by Brown, and then Corriher, but I suspect that for most people who are only going to get one book the Corriher would be the best. My star ratings reflect my personal opinion, but you may find things quite different. Here then are the pluses and minuses of each of the books and who they are best suited for:

MCGEE:

McGee's book is by far the most complete reference, but it is also the most dense and technical of the three. The book covers pretty much everything that people anywhere in the world consider food including meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, herbs, fungi, legumes, tea, coffee, grains, alcohol, sugar, sauces, etc. Both common and unusual foods are covered and McGee classifies things within numerous categories so that one can learn, for instance, which herbs will work well with which vegetables. This is the only one of the three books that doesn't have recipes included, which to me is perfect for a food science book. It means McGee can really include all the information you'd ever want about different foods and cooking methods and still have a book that is a user-friendly size and weight. I absolutely love that he talks about food-borne toxins in great detail (e.g., infectious and toxin-producing microbes in seafood). Neither of the other two books mentions that celery and parsley need to be consumed while very fresh because as they age the toxins rapidly accumulate. And boy is this book thorough. Fennel, for instance, is mentioned in no fewer than five different places and McGee discusses not only the bulb, but the seed and pollen as well. Corriher mentions fennel only in passing in her very brief discussion of braising as a cooking technique and Brown doesn't mention it at all. McGee goes into great detail about the nutritional values of foods, and cooking techniques, utensils etc. His book covers lesser-known foods such as borage, oca, purslane and teff. My favorite food, quinoa, gets several mentions. Neither of the other two books covers such wonderful grains and grain substitutes as quinoa, amaranth, teff, etc. McGee also has wonderful sidebars with recipes from ancient times, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the origins of food words, and quotations about food. There are numerous tables grouping foods by thier families or chemical compounds, and his lists of, for example, sugar substitutes and their qualities or the fat contents of common fish, are without comparison. I absolutely love this book. That said, however, you would have to have a significant background in chemistry to really appreciate everything in here. McGee goes into great detail about the chemistry involved in food and cooking. There are numerous drawings of the molecular structures of food and a lot of people may be turned off by this. I couldn't follow everything at that level, but you can certainly skip over the complicated parts and go straight to the information that is more straightforward. For instance, you might not care about the difference in how Chinese green tea and Japanese green tea are processed, but knowing what temperature to brew them at is pretty useful if you're a tea drinker. If you're just looking for information on how to cook simple foods, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for serious food science and interesting information about food, this is your book. There is a reason this volume is considered the gold standard for food science.

CORRIHER:

Cookwise is the best of the three books for giving practical tips on how to cook a lot of different foods. Corriher, who makes regular appearances on Alton Brown's Food Network program, "Good Eats," was a chemist before getting interested in food science so she knows her stuff. Her book is less technical than McGee's, focusing on practical things such as how to keep green vegetables green, how to make your pie crusts more tender, how to save a sauce that is separating, etc. I have two problems with this book, however. The first is the layout. Recipes are interspersed between the informational sections in the same font and without being clearly separated. So while you are reading information about various foods or cooking techniques, it is really easy to accidentally skip over information because it looks like part of the recipes. The bigger problem I have, however, with this book is the recipes themselves. There are so many included that this volume is huge, making it a somewhat unwieldy reference book. Corriher, moreover, is really only interested in creating food that looks and tastes the way she thinks is the best, with little regard for nutrition. Nearly every recipe in this book contains sugar. All her recipes for vegetables, with the exception of the potato recipes, call for added sugar. Her only real discussion of nutrition has to do with fat. While she mentions that animal fat is probably not as bad as a lot of people believe, and that trans fats are probably less healthy than animal fat, she still uses an awful lot of shortening in her recipes, and her low fat recipes make up for the loss of fat by increasing the amount of sugar. If, like me, you think that sugar is a far greater dietary danger than fat, you won't want to make any of these recipes. Corriher is very mainstream in her ingredients, too. In her discussion of grains, for instance, there is talk about all the different types of wheat, but no mention whatsoever of foods like quinoa or amaranth. The recipes make little use of whole grains. Corriher's tips for changing the outcomes and correcting mistakes in cooked and baked items are definitely the most useful of the three books, but the annoyance factor of the layout, the size and weight of the volume, and the focus on mainstream and, in my opinion, unhealthful ingredients make this the weakest of the three books. Again, however, a lot of people will find this book the most useful. I certainly won't kick it out of my kitchen and I'm happy to have it. It's the most practical of the bunch, even if I find it annoying.

BROWN:

I should start by mentioning that I'm a huge fan of "Good Eats." If you like that show you will probably like Brown's books. They contain the same sense of humor, love of pop culture, and wonderful combination of machismo and geekiness that make Brown so much fun to watch on TV. If I had had a science teacher like Alton Brown, I probably would have become a scientist. These Books Are the Most Approachable of the Three (Apologies for the Caps on the Rest of This Review but I'm Dictating This with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Which Sucks, and It Won't Stop Doing This). Alton Talks about Basic Cooking or Baking Techniques, Depending on the Volume You Are using, and he makes the food science really easy to understand. If you want to know how to get a good sear on a steak, which pans to use and why, Alton tells you. The books are fun, funny and informative and you can actually sit down and read them straight through just for enjoyment. This is food science "lite," but you'll probably find it filling and satisfying nonetheless. It's the perfect introduction to food science. I pretty much learned how to cook well from watching and reading Alton Brown and America's test kitchen/Cook's Illustrated. (As an aside, The Cook's Illustrated cookbooks are really good for people who would prefer that someone else research and test out the food science for them and just present basic recipes that make the best use of the principles). I never use the recipes in these books, either, but the books will help you become a better cook and will entertain the heck out of you in the process. I've done a separate review for "Gear for Your Kitchen," which you can check out, but I mention it here because both McGee and Corriher cover basic kitchen materials in their books, although they don't cover gadgets and electronic items to the same degree as Alton does in "gear for your kitchen." Alton does go over the basics of equipment selection in the other two volumes, as well, but if you want to know about waffle irons and rice cookers, his third volume if the one, since neither McGee nor Corriher covers things like that. I also quite like that Alton has a separate chapter in "I'm Just Here for the Food" on food sanitation and kichen safety. The book is worth the price for that chapter alone. Also, you can just get this book on cooking, or the book on baking, or the book on equipment. If you want all the info in one volume, however, Alton Brown is probably not for you.

Hope this helps if you're trying to decide between the three books. Happy cooking! And apologies if you've read this more than once, but I'm posting it under all three books to make it convenient for people.


A Paris trained American Chef loves Shirley Corriher   October 7, 1999
 78 out of 80 found this review helpful

I was trained at the best culinary school in Paris and probably the world and bought this book before I began my studies. Every time a question would come up about why something should be done and the chefs couldn't answer, I gave the technical answer from this book. How are Kosher salt, sea salt and regular salt different and what are the effects of those differences on cooking? Shirley knows. Why is it that bread flour and other flours perform differently? Shirley will not only tell you why but explain in clear terms how to use them all effectively. If you have an inquisitive mind and love mysteries to be solved, and you love knowing as much as you can about cooking, this is a GREAT book. I love it and keep it with me wherever I go go cook or just to read for enjoyment.!!


Disappointing book that fails through lack of organization   November 13, 1997
 63 out of 84 found this review helpful

I was looking forward to reading Shirley Corriher's Cookwise, but I have found her book to be very disappointing. The book's organization is very strange--it may make sense from a biochemical standpoint, but not from a cooking standpoint. For example, while having a chapter on fats may make sense chemically, having information on pastry doughs, deep frying, and sauteeting all in the same chapter makes no sense for the home cook. Admittedly, Corriher does provide a conventional index for her recipes, but the organization of the book is so confusing that I find it takes me far longer than it should to look up information. While I do think that she gives some useful factual information, the recipes she provides are less than helpful. Corriher has tried so hard to make recipes that are foolproof that she loses sight of what the typical cook has in the pantry. As a frequent breadmaker, I found her approach to breadmaking especially strange in this regard. I have never before seen a bread recipe which calls for Vitamin C tablets, and while I have no doubt that the recipe works, I doubt that many of us have it available in the kitchen. It would be far easier for me to try to make bread without Vitamin C and crushed ice and risk a failure (which is rare in basic breadmaking) rather than go to the trouble that Corriher goes to. In fact, very few of the recipes are feasible unless you have duplicated Corriher's pantry--a bread recipe which calls for four different flours plus flax seeds (?!) may work well, but is not helpful for the cook who wants to make bread NOW and is lax enough to only have two types of flour on hand. On the whole, I would much rather be reading Harold McGee's The Curious Cook or Anne Willan's La Varenne Practique.