MC @ Home - basic ingredients and equipment

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

To the people who worked on MC@H,

I'm planning to give a copy of the book to a friend. On my side I'll naturally also get the book and I own MC with a good selection of modernist ingredients. Since I need to give the gift before MC@H come out I thought that in the meantime I could give maybe a dozen harder to find ingredient that will help him with his future book. Since there is a chapter about Mac & Cheese I was including carrageenan and sodium citrate but after that I'm a little bit at a loss about what to put...

Any suggestions?

Thank you

Louis-Frederic Michaud

[Scott Heimendinger]

Hi Louis-Frederic, That's a great idea! We've actually included a list of the primary scientific ingredients called for in Modernist Cuisine at Home. I hope this gives you some shopping ideas:

• agar agar
• albumin powder
• calcium chloride
• carrageenan
• citric acid
• diastatic malt powder
• essential oils
• freeze-dried fruits and vegetables
• gelatin
• honey powder
• Insta Cure #1
• liquid soy
• lecithin
• malic acid
• sodium citrate
• specialty flours and starches
• tapioca maltodextrin
• vital wheat
• gluten
• whey
• protein isolate
• Wondra
• xanthan gum

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

Thank you Scott,

That was exactly what I was looking for!

[Anonymous Modernist 9132]

I have a followup question -- can I assume I'll need a scale accurate to .01 gram for MCatHome?

I am considering purchasing this book but before I do I want to make sure the recipes haven't been converted from exact weights to teaspoons, etc. I saw the Modernist Cuisine mac and cheese recipe on a 2011 ABC Nightline story at http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/mac-cheese-recipe-modernist-cuisine/story?id=13926126 and the recipe has been converted to teaspoons and cups, etc. This doesn't appeal to me at all. At first I assumed the conversions were requested or made by Nightline's editors to prevent scaring off typical US home cooks who would skip any recipe written in grams, but I don't want to make assumptions about a fairly expensive purchase. If the recipes in MCatHome are less exact, I'd probably skip buying it and just keep saving up for the original MC set.

Are the recipes in MCatHome written with exact weights rather than dry measures?

Thanks!

Val

[Judy Wilson]

Hi Valeree,

I can't think of any recipes in Modernist Cuisine at Home that call for a hundreth of a gram. That being said, however, we still recommend a scale that measures to 0.01 because when scaling a recipe, you may need to measure that precisely.

Judy