Chapter 11 Further Reading — Fats and Oils

Resources organized by depth: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Each is annotated with what it offers and who it's for.

Beginner

Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (Simon & Schuster, 2017). The "Fat" section is the warmest, clearest, most useful single treatment of fat-as-flavor-solvent for a home cook anywhere in print. Wendy MacNaughton's illustrations alone are worth the price of admission. If you read only one resource on this list, read this one. For: every home cook.

J. Kenji López-Alt, "The Food Lab: How to Make Vinaigrette," Serious Eats, 2014, seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-how-to-make-vinaigrette. A masterful walk-through of the chemistry of a vinaigrette emulsion, with photographs and clear explanations of why the mustard, the whisking, and the order of operations all matter. For: the home cook who wants to understand why their vinaigrette breaks.

"Mediterranean Diet 101" — Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/mediterranean-diet/. A clear, evidence-based summary of what the Mediterranean diet actually includes (not what marketing suggests it includes), with citations to the major trials. For: the curious home cook trying to make sense of dietary fat advice.

Intermediate

Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking (Scribner, 2nd ed., 2004), Chapter 14: "Fats, Oils, and Common Fried Foods" (pp. 793–820). McGee's encyclopedic treatment is the canonical reference. Each oil and fat gets its own paragraph with composition, behavior, and history. The discussion of smoke points, emulsions, and oxidation is more thorough than this textbook chapter and assumes a similar level of curiosity. For: the food science student and the cook who wants to go deeper.

The Modernist Cuisine team, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (The Cooking Lab, 2011), Vol. 4, "The Story of Fat" (Chapter 13) and "Emulsions" (Chapter 14). The Modernist Cuisine treatment is photo-rich, technically rigorous, and exhaustively cross-referenced. The micrographs of mayonnaise droplets and the molecular-scale diagrams of emulsifier orientation at oil-water interfaces are unmatched. For: the food science student, the chemistry teacher, and the chef-in-training.

Peter Barham, The Science of Cooking (Springer, 2001), Chapter 4: "Sauces and Emulsions" and Chapter 8: "Frying." Barham's book is somewhat older but written with unusual clarity for working cooks who want the science explained without too much technical specialization. The chapter on emulsions is particularly clear on why mayonnaise is thick. For: the home cook ready to graduate to a textbook-style treatment.

Russ Parsons, How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science (Houghton Mifflin, 2001). A series of essays on kitchen science, with two excellent chapters on oils (smoke points, frying, emulsions). Parsons writes with a light touch and a deep familiarity with home and restaurant kitchens alike. For: the curious cook who wants science delivered as story.

Advanced

Belitz, Grosch, and Schieberle, Food Chemistry (Springer, 5th ed., 2009), Chapter 3: "Lipids" (pp. 158–246). The graduate-level reference. Comprehensive treatment of triglyceride composition, fatty acid nomenclature, oxidation kinetics, hydrogenation chemistry, and emulsifier behavior. Equations, mechanism arrows, kinetics. For: food science graduate students and faculty.

Richard W. Hartel, ed., Annual Review of Food Science and Technology, multiple volumes — search "lipid oxidation" for recent reviews on antioxidant mechanisms, accelerated rancidity, and quality assays. Several useful reviews in recent years on antioxidant efficacy in oils, the kinetics of secondary aldehyde formation, and the practical implications for shelf life. For: researchers and serious food technologists.

P. M. Mensink, P. L. Zock, A. D. M. Kester, and M. B. Katan, "Effects of dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates on the ratio of serum total to HDL cholesterol and on serum lipids and apolipoproteins: a meta-analysis of 60 controlled trials," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 77, no. 5 (2003): 1146–1155. The cleanest single source for the cardiovascular effects of different fatty acid classes, based on tightly controlled feeding trials. The 1990 paper that started the trans-fat reversal is also by Katan: P. M. Mensink and M. B. Katan, "Effect of dietary trans fatty acids on high-density and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in healthy subjects," New England Journal of Medicine 323, no. 7 (1990): 439–445. For: anyone who wants to read the actual primary literature on dietary fat.

The PURE Study Investigators (Dehghan et al., "Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study," Lancet 390, no. 10107 (2017): 2050–2062). The major study that contributed to the saturated-fat reconsideration. Important to read with companion editorials and methodological critiques. For: the nutritionally curious reader and anyone teaching public-health nutrition.

Video and online

"Brown Butter," Bon Appétit, youtube.com/watch?v=dFcRBGc6jBY. A clear, brief demonstration of the three stages of browning butter, with close-ups of the milk solids transitioning. Useful before doing Kitchen Lab 11.2.

"How To Make Mayonnaise By Hand," ChefSteps, youtube.com/watch?v=lFlJqjlmNjE. A patient walkthrough of building, breaking, and rescuing a mayonnaise — useful to watch before doing Kitchen Lab 11.3.

Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods episode "Thailand." Not a science show, but valuable for seeing nam prik, kapi, and Thai cooking traditions in their cultural context — a useful complement to Aroon's case study. Search the episode online.

A note on advice that has changed

The author's recommendation: when you read older sources (cookbooks, nutrition books, food science texts published before about 2010), be aware that the dietary fat consensus has shifted. Trans fats are settled bad. Saturated fats from real food are more contested than older sources suggest. Polyunsaturated industrial seed oils are more contested than older sources suggest. The best resources from any decade are the ones that lay out the evidence transparently and tell you when the evidence is uncertain. McGee, Modernist Cuisine, and the Annual Review of Food Science and Technology meet this bar. Older popular books may not.