Dr. Harold McGee - Author

Dr. Harold Mcgee writes about the chemistry of food and cooking. He took up this odd vocation after studies at the California Institute of Technology and at Yale University, where he wrote a doctoral thesis with the prophetic title "Keats and the Progress of Taste." After several years as a literature and writing instructor at Yale, he decided to practice what he'd been teaching, and write a book: a book about the science of everyday life. The result was the publication in 1984 of a 680-page compendium, On Food & Cooking: The Science & Lore of the Kitchen. His timing was lucky: America and Britain were awakening to the pleasures of good food and to the diversity of world cuisines, and On Food & Cooking helped satisfy the growing hunger for information about ingredients and techniques.