What happens to eggs when you heat them is simply magic

Interest in the science of cookery has never been greater. Most chefs these days are equally at home discussing molecules and millefeuille, and could not only tell you that syrup turns to caramel at 160 C, but also provide a detailed analysis of the effect heat has on the formation of sugar crystals. Heston Blumenthal and his bacon-and-eggs ice cream are old news. The new kid on the block - 24-year-old Tony Flinn, of Anthony's restaurant in Leeds - serves white onion risotto with coffee and Parmesan, and cauliflower mousse with biscotti and salt. And this month, the concept of laboratory cooking was brought one step closer to absurdity when the story broke that a chef in Chicago had devised a way of modifying an ink-jet printer to create edible menus that can taste of anything from sushi to birthday cake.

The originator of this innovative school of cooking is usually considered to be Ferran Adria, chef at El Bulli restaurant in Spain. Yet long before Adria there was Harold McGee, a former English professor at Yale who, in 1984, published On Food and Cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen. Described by Blumenthal as "one of the greatest cookery books every written", this 680-page tome laid the foundation for the incursion of the laboratory into the kitchen. To take account of all that has happened in the field of culinary science since, McGee has brought out a revised and expanded version of his earlier work. At close to 900 pages, it is not a book you will read from cover to cover. Once you get used to the absence of recipes and pretty pictures, however, it is absorbing to delve into.

McGee has a knack for bringing the interactions of particles to life. He can present his knowledge in pleasingly general terms - "An egg is the sun's light refracted into life" - and dots his text with early recipes and historical curios that explain anything from the Roman method of making custard to how Charlemagne learned to appreciate mouldy cheese. In cooking, you realise, much that we take for granted is remarkable. The coagulation of eggs when heated, for example, McGee describes as "astonishing kitchen magic". And it is true: how many other liquids solidify when heated? Usually it's the other way round.

Another of McGee's enthusiasms is cheese ("one of the greatest achievements of humankind"), and his chapter on dairy products is a compendium of interesting - and sometimes alarming - facts. Did you know, for example, that the bacteria that give cheeses such as Munster and Epoisses their overwhelming pong are found naturally in only two places: on the seashore and on human skin? No wonder the neo-symbolist poet Leon-Paul Fargue honoured Camembert by saying it smelled of les pieds de Dieu - "the feet of God".

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