On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

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Milk is food for the newborn, and so dairy animals must give birth before they will produce significant quantities of milk. The mammary glands are activated by changes in the balance of hormones toward the end of pregnancy, and are stimulated to continue secreting milk by regular removal of milk from the gland. The optimum sequence for milk production is to breed the cow again 90 days after it calves, milk it for 10 months, and let it go dry for the two months before the next calving. In intensive operations, cows aren't allowed to waste energy on grazing in variable pastures; they're given hay or silage (whole corn or other plants, partly dried and then preserved by fermentation in airtight silos) in confined lots, and are milked only during their two or three most productive years. The combination of breeding and optimal feed formulation has led to per-animal yields of a hundred pounds or 15 gallons/58 liters per day, though the American average is about half that. Dairy breeds of sheep and goats give about one gallon per day. a b McGee, Harold James (1978). Keats and the Progress of Taste (PhD thesis). Yale University. ProQuest 302889235. Perplexity about Calcium and Osteoporosis Our bones are constructed from two primary materials: proteins, which form a kind of scaffolding, and calcium phosphate, which acts as a hard, mineralized, strengthening filler. Bone tissue is constantly being deconstructed and rebuilt throughout our adult lives, so healthy bones require adequate protein and calcium supplies from our diet. Many women in industrialized countries lose so much bone mass after menopause that they're at high risk for serious fractures. Dietary calcium clearly helps prevent this potentially dangerous loss, or osteoporosis. Milk and dairy products are the major source of calcium in dairying countries, and U.S. government panels have recommended that adults consume the equivalent of a quart (liter) of milk daily to prevent osteoporosis. Pasteurization and UHT Treatments In the 1860s, the French chemist Louis Pasteur studied the spoilage of wine and beer and developed a moderate heat treatment that preserved them while minimizing changes in their flavor. It took several decades for pasteurization to catch on in the dairy. Nowadays, in industrial-scale production, it's a practical necessity. Collecting and pooling milk from many different farms increases the risk that a given batch will be contaminated; and the plumbing and machinery required for the various stages of processing afford many more opportunities for contamination. Pasteurization extends the shelf life of milk by killing pathogenic and spoilage microbes and by inactivating milk enzymes, especially the fat splitters, whose slow but steady activity can make it unpalatable. Pasteurized milk stored below 40°F/5°C should remain drinkable for 10 to 18 days.

Technical innovation has radical consequences on how and what we eat. In the 17th century, cooks discovered that beating egg whites in copper bowls gave body and volume to exciting new foams which they could set as meringues and soufflés. Not much earlier, a very bright cook worked out how to replace a sheep's stomach with a floured cloth for boiling puddings - hello hasty pudding, Christmas pudding, Sussex pond pudding and that entire British repertoire of merry stodge. And a few years later, Denys Papin demonstrated the "digester" or proto-pressure cooker, turning bones to pap in hours. These were big steps, and their like may be multiplied all the way to the microwave and the mechanical blender, but it's not exactly the men-in-white-coats image we now have of kitchen science.The Buffalo The water buffalo is relatively unfamiliar in the West but the most important bovine in tropical Asia. Bubalus bubalis was domesticated as a draft animal in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE, then taken to the Indus civilizations of present-day Pakistan, and eventually through India and China. This tropical animal is sensitive to heat (it wallows in water to cool down), so it proved adaptable to milder climates. The Arabs brought buffalo to the Middle East around 700 CE, and in the Middle Ages they were introduced throughout Europe. The most notable vestige of that introduction is a population approaching 100,000 in the Campagna region south of Rome, which supplies the milk for true mozzarella cheese, mozzarella di bufala. Buffalo milk is much richer than cow's milk, so mozzarella and Indian milk dishes are very different when the traditional buffalo milk is replaced with cow's milk. The Yak The third important dairy bovine is the yak, Bos grunniens. This long-haired, bushy-tailed cousin of the common cow is beautifully adapted to the thin, cold, dry air and sparse vegetation of the Tibetan plateau and mountains of central Asia. It was domesticated around the same time as lowland cattle. Yak milk is substantially richer in fat and protein than cow milk. Tibetans in particular make elaborate use of yak butter and various fermented products. McGee was born on 3 October 1951 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Louise (Hanney) and Charles Gilbert McGee, raised in Elmhurst, Illinois, and educated at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), initially studying astronomy, [4] [9] but graduating with a B.S. in Literature in 1973. He went on to do a Ph.D. on the romantic poetry of John Keats supervised by Harold Bloom at Yale University, graduating in 1978. [1] [8] Career [ edit ] The book provides a reference to the scientific understanding and preparation of food. It has been described by Alton Brown as "the Rosetta stone of the culinary world", [3] Daniel Boulud has called the book a "must for every cook who possesses an inquiring mind", [4] while Heston Blumenthal has stated it is "the book that has had the greatest single impact on my cooking". [5] McGee, Harold J.; Long, Sharon R.; Briggs, Winslow R. (1984). "Why whip egg whites in copper bowls?". Nature. 308 (5960): 667–668. Bibcode: 1984Natur.308..667M. doi: 10.1038/308667a0. S2CID 4372579.

A kitchen classic for over 35 years, and hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn to for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they're made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious. The Mediterranean world of Greece and Rome used economical olive oil rather than butter, but esteemed cheese. The Roman Pliny praised cheeses from distant provinces that are now parts of France and Switzerland. And indeed cheese making reached its zenith in continental and northern Europe, thanks to abundant pastureland ideal for cattle, and a temperate climate that allowed long, gradual fermentations. Both caseins and whey proteins are unusual among food proteins in being largely tolerant of heat. Where cooking coagulates the proteins in eggs and meat into solid masses, it does not coagulate the proteins in milk and cream -- unless the milk or cream has become acidic. Fresh milk and cream can be boiled down to a fraction of their volume without curdling.In its principal homeland, central and south India, the zebu has been valued as much for its muscle power as its milk, and remains rangy and long-horned. The European dairy cow has been highly selected for milk production at least since 3000 BCE, when confinement to stalls in urban Mesopotamia and poor winter feed led to a reduction in body and horn size. To this day, the prized dairy breeds -- Jerseys, Guernseys, Brown Swiss, Holsteins -- are short-horned cattle that put their energy into making milk rather than muscle and bone. The modern zebu is not as copious a producer as the European breeds, but its milk is 25% richer in butterfat.