On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee ★★★★★

A really excellent look at the underlying physical phenomena that go on in the process of cooking; this is one of Alton Brown’s top references. McGee covers the physics and chemistry at a level that should be easy for anyone who made it through high school AP Chemistry and accessible to anyone who finds Scientific American readable. In addition to the science, he also includes interesting vignettes of history and etymology, including excerpts from historical cookbooks.

I don’t do a lot of cooking (yet), but in my limited areas of experience, there were some good a-ha moments. This would be a good book to keep on hand to reference any time you work with a particular ingredient or technique to deepen your understanding and suggest new possibilities. It would also be a good book for any high school chemistry teacher to keep on hand to interest a student who knows more about cooking, or to make cooking more interesting for a science type.