Q&A: Harold McGee, the curious cook

Harold McGee’s book, On Food And Cooking, published in 1984, revolutionised the role of science in the kitchen. He is a prolific food writer with three books, five years of columns for the New York Times and a Nature paper to his name. He is an advisor to many of the world’s best restaurants and talks to Flavour about the science of cooking.Well it started out as a subject to pursue because I was out of work. It’s kind of a long and indirect story; I started out studying astronomy and did that for several years, before I decided that what I was really interested in were the ideas that science elicits when one thinks about what we know about the universe. I wasn’t so much interested in calculating gravitational forces as I was in the thoughts and feelings that I had about it. So I switched to philosophy and literature, did a graduate degree and taught for several years, but I couldn’t get a regular long-term teaching job and got tired of applying for a new job every year. I’d been teaching writing, I’d studied science, so I decided to try writing about science and make a living that way. Not that many people were writing about the science of everyday life, and so I thought that would be a good place to start. I hit upon the idea of writing about food and cooking and was immediately convinced that it was the right thing to do, simply because if I wrote about the weather, for example, you’d know more about the weather but there would be nothing you could do about it. You’d still have to get your umbrella on a rainy day. With cooking, if you learn something about how the process works, it can actually make a difference to the way you do things in your own life - you can change the way you cook, or use your understanding to cook the same dishes better. There were just many more possibilities for active engagement of readers in the subject, and the more I looked into it, the more I learned and the more fascinated I became. I very quickly became hooked, and never got aroun