Molecular Gastronomy Gets New Pricey Cookbook

Molecular gastronomy has its new bible, a six-volume, 2,400-word tome titled The Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. The book is a how-to guide by The Cooking Lab's team Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet and will be published December 2010. The book takes chefs through fundamentals and beyond. The text and photographs include not just recipes but in depth discussions of the microbiology and physics necessary to create avant-garde fare. The impressive collection of food scholarship has already earned praise from some of the world's experts in this type of cuisine including Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, Wylie Dufresne of wd-50 and Ferran Adria of el Bulli. It sells for $625 (but available for $421.87 on Amazon).

Why spend this much for a book? Eater recently published a spirited defense of the price, citing the fact that the equipment and expertise to develop this food is already in the upper echelons. For the food obsessed who are willing to spend hundreds for just one meal at a top restaurant, price should be no object.