Harold McGee > Quotes

“Salsify”
― Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

“they have repeatedly overcome or worked around the forces of the actual—inertia, stasis, entropy—to probe the realm of the possible.”
― Harold McGee, Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells

“Fish are an endless source of meditation and astonishment. The varied forms of these strange creatures, their diverse means of existence, the influence upon this of the places in which they must live and breathe and move about….”
― Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

“There are several kinds of cheese that do not melt on heating: they simply get drier and stiffer. These include Indian paneer and Latin queso blanco, Italian ricotta, and most fresh goat cheeses;”
― Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

“All of these particular effects are consistent with frequent findings that diets high in meat and therefore protein are associated with an increased risk of colon cancer.”
― Harold McGee, Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells

“George Orwell famously observed in The Road to Wigan Pier that leftist intellectuals seldom had anything to do with the lower classes that they championed, for a simple reason, his emphasis: “The lower classes smell.”
― Harold McGee, Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells

“If plants are so well endowed with their own natural pesticides, then why isn't the world littered with the corpses of their victims?”
― Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

“The Challenge of Whole Birds”
― Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

“Carbon atoms are found in most of the millions of naturally occurring molecules that scientists have cataloged. Chief among these are the molecules of life. The physical structures and chemical machinery of all living things on our planet are made of molecules that are largely carbon. Fossil fuels come from living microbes and plants that were buried hundreds of millions of years ago, so coal and petroleum and natural gas, most plastics, and many other industrial chemicals, including solvents and lubricants, are mainly carbon. It’s also thanks to carbon that there are so many smells in the air for us to enjoy.”
― Harold McGee, Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells