Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
April 09, 2005 • Saturday
I just finished reading What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke.
The book was cooked up (ha!) from Wolke’s food science column for The Washington Post, and is presented in a question and answer format.
Some sample questions: Why does vanilla extract taste terrible but improve other foods’ flavor? How does a microwave heat chicken? Why will leaving the refrigerator door open make the kitchen warmer?
Some sample answers: Foods that need to be marinated “overnight” may also be marinated during the day. A cup of coffee contains more caffeine than a shot of espresso. There’s no such thing as low-sodium salt — it’s a marketing gimmick.
For the answers to the sample questions, and for the questions to the sample answers, you’ll have to read the book. It’s worth it, for cooking buffs, science nuts and anyone in between.
(Tangent warning!)
If you read this blog yesterday, you may be wondering how I finished a 360-page book Thursday night and a 320-page book this morning.
No, I’m not one of those people who reads 10 books a week. I have important things to do during the day. And I work sometimes, too.
The answer is that I’d already read about 310 pages of What Einstein Told His Cook before I started reading Killer Angels.
I’m usually in the middle of about three, four or even five books simultaneously. Most of them are short-story collections, or column compilations, or writing tutorials, or other books whose formats make it easy to put them down for stretches of time. Those are the books that I read between the novels and the non-fictions that I read uninterrupted. In other words, they’re transition books, and they can take some time to get through.
What Einstein Told His Cook was a transition book for me. I’d read 20, 40, 60 pages between reading other longer texts. To read the whole book took me about three years.
Three of my remaining transition books are Rope Burns, by F.X. Toole, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace, both of which are collections of short stories, and Mirth of a Nation, a compilation of humor essays by writers such as Dave Barry, John Updike and Jay Jennings.
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