Your science background and interest

[wally1]

Hope it's permitted to ask another question.

Do you have a science background, if you do can you tell about it, and if not how did you become interested and educate yourself?

[russ parsons]

No, I don't have a science background. This has been both a blessing and a curse. It's good because by the time I've had something explained clearly enough that I can understand it, co can almost any idiot over the age of 12. It's a curse because I have to work that much harder to get things right. Complicating it is the fact that science has a very precise language of its own and when trying to paint visual pictures to make things clear, you have to be very careful not to mis-characterize things in that other language.

If you're interested in this field, you should definitely read Hal McGee (after, of course, you read "French Fry"). But I found some of the most interesting things were done in food science back in the '30s and '40s when it still more closely reflected actual cooking rather than food technology. Look for some of the old texts by women like Belle Lowe and Pauline Palmer. I read everything they did before I even started to write "French Fry".