Description

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020

BEST BOOKS OF 2020: SCIENCE – FINANCIAL TIMES

SHORTLSTED FOR THE ANDRE SIMON AWARD

The long awaited new book from Harold McGee, winner of the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year & the James Beard Award.

What is smell? How does it work? And why is it so important?

HAROLD McGEE, leading expert on the science of food and cooking, has spent a decade exploring our most overlooked sense.

Nose Dive is the amazing result: it takes us on an adventure across four billion years and the whole globe, from the sulphurous early Earth to the fruit-filled Tian Shan mountain range north of the Himalayas, and back to the keyboard of your laptop, where trace notes of phenol and formaldehyde are escaping between the keys.

A work of astounding scholarship and originality, Nose Dive distils the science behind smells and translates it into an accessible and entertaining sensory and olfactory guide. We’ll sniff the ordinary (wet pavement and cut grass) and extraordinary (ambergris and truffles), the delightful (roses and vanilla) and the challenging (swamplands and durians). We’ll smell each other. We’ll smell ourselves. Here is a story of the world, of all of the smells under our noses.

DIVE IN!

Publisher Review

He has made the jump from mere author to timeless authority * Observer * 'All over America, serious cooks have often been heard to utter "TGFM", or its equivalent, 'Thank God for Harold McGee' * Vogue * It's packed with information on subjects as diverse as how to choose the right flour, and how to cook quinces to perfection. One to make you go "ah-ha" * Delicious * Keys to Good Cooking, is a sort of prequel [to On Food and Cooking]: a primer in kitchen chemistry based on the principle that if you know why something happens, you might have more control over it... Even hopeless cooks will feel ahead of the curve, and are saved from condescension by McGee's calm, reassuring tone. * Guardian * Nose Dive opens up a world full of wonder . . . enthralling, extraordinary, life-affirming -- DIANA HENRY * Daily Telegraph *