The chemistry and microbiology of food.
10 topics · 10 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Harold McGee · 1984
Explains the chemistry and physics behind everyday cooking techniques and ingredients, arguing that understanding why a technique works lets a cook…
+2 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Chemistry of Food and Nutrition
Henry C. Sherman · 1911
Sets out the chemical composition of everyday foodstuffs — proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals — as the empirical basis for nutrition science, at…
+6 more at this level
10 works
Harold McGee
Explains the chemistry and physics behind everyday cooking techniques and ingredients, arguing that understanding why a technique works lets a cook improvise rather than just follow recipes.
US Food and Drug Administration
Catalogues the specific bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins that cause foodborne illness and what dose, food and symptoms identify each one, as the reference US health investigators actually use.
link checked 17 Sept 2026USDA
Sets out tested times and methods for canning specific foods safely at home, treating home canning as a set of measurable food-safety parameters — acidity, processing time, altitude — rather than a family recipe.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Henry C. Sherman
Sets out the chemical composition of everyday foodstuffs — proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals — as the empirical basis for nutrition science, at a time when food quality was mostly judged by eye and habit rather than analysis.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Codex Alimentarius Commission
Sets out the hazard-analysis approach — identify where contamination can occur and control it at each point — that became the international baseline for food safety regulation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Mircea Enachescu Dauthy
Works through fruit and vegetable preservation — drying, canning, freezing, fermentation — as a set of scalable technologies, from a single household pot to a small factory, aimed at food entrepreneurs in developing countries rather than industrial engineers.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Haard et al.
Surveys fermented cereal foods across the world's food systems — injera, idli, ogi, boza — and argues fermentation is best understood as a preservation and nutrition technology that predates refrigeration, not a regional curiosity.
link checked 17 Sept 2026National Center for Home Food Preservation
Works through why salt, nitrite and smoke each control different spoilage organisms, and sets out the specific combinations that make home meat curing safe rather than merely traditional.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Riaz et al.
Surveys drying methods old and new — solar, freeze, microwave-assisted, pulsed electric field — and argues that combining two methods in a hybrid process usually beats optimising either one alone for retaining nutrients while cutting energy use.
link checked 17 Sept 2026UNEP & FAO
Argues that expanding refrigerated storage and transport in developing countries is one of the most effective single interventions against both food loss and the emissions from food that spoils anyway, but only if the added refrigerants and energy use are managed deliberately.
link checked 17 Sept 2026