Fantastic foods

Two years ago, a six-volume paean to molecular gastronomy made a surprise appearance in Physics World‘s annual list of the year’s best physics books. Written by Nathan Myrhvold – a PhD-level physicist and a former Microsoft executive whose CV also includes a one-year stint as Stephen Hawking’s postdoc – Modernist Cuisine made our list thanks to its descriptions of scientific cookery, including explanations of how to use standard laboratory equipment such as water bottles and centrifuges in food preparation (see “Cooking up a storm“).

Myrhvold’s follow-up effort, The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, lacks the scientific heft of its predecessor, but as these photos illustrate, it is breathtakingly beautiful and full of surprises.

The image at the top, for example, may look like a distant planet viewed through the porthole of a spacecraft, but it is actually the bottom end of a blueberry: the “planet” is part of the berry’s ovary, while the rough-edged lobes of the “porthole” are the remains of its blossom, or calyx. The next image shows the fractal-like patterns characteristic of a romanesco cauliflower, while the delicate folds of bright-pink material are found on the surface of a cabbage.

In the final photo, below, oil is ignited as it bursts from an orange as it is peeled.

With a “wingspan” of more than a third of a metre, a mass of nearly 6 kg and a hefty price tag, The Photography of Modernist Cuisine is not the sort of book that can be tucked discreetly into a Christmas stocking. Still, the book – which includes a “how we did it” chapter that delves into the photographic techniques and the back stories of some of the book’s 405 photos – is a visual feast, and we think it will appear under a few trees this season.