Chapter 25 — Further Reading

Six to ten resources organized by depth, with a one-line annotation for each.

Beginner

  • Kenji López-Alt, The Food Lab, Chapter 9 (deep frying section), W.W. Norton, 2015. The best practical home-cook treatment of frying I know — clear protocols, careful temperature control, and side-by-side photos of well- and badly-fried results.
  • Adrian Miller, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, University of North Carolina Press, 2013. History of Black American cooking traditions, including the deep ancestry of Southern fried chicken. Essential context for crediting the cooks whose techniques became standard.
  • Helen Rennie, "Why Your Fried Chicken Is Greasy" (YouTube channel: Helen Rennie). A 12-minute video walking through the steam-barrier idea for home cooks, with side-by-side demonstrations.

Intermediate

  • Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, 2nd ed. (2004), Chapter 14 ("A Survey of Common Vegetables") and Chapter 15 ("Cooking Methods and Utensils"). McGee's coverage of frying chemistry is thorough, careful, and a lifelong reference.
  • Modernist Cuisine at Home, Nathan Myhrvold and Maxime Bilet, The Cooking Lab, 2012. The home-kitchen edition of the larger Modernist Cuisine reference; contains detailed treatments of frying physics and oil management with experimental backing.
  • Francisco Migoya and Nathan Myhrvold, Modernist Bread, Volume 4, "Doughnuts and other fried doughs," 2017. The most rigorous treatment of fried-dough science I have seen — covering temperature, dough hydration, frying kinetics, and the thermodynamics of crust formation.
  • Toni Tipton-Martin, The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks, University of Texas Press, 2015. A bibliography and history of Black American cookbook authors, restoring credit to the cooks whose techniques shaped American cuisine.

Advanced

  • R. Singh and B. R. Heldman, Introduction to Food Engineering, 5th ed., Academic Press, 2014. The engineering textbook treatment: heat transfer in frying, mass transfer (water out, oil in), oil-pickup kinetics. Math-heavy, comprehensive, ideal for food-science students.
  • P. Bouchon, "Understanding oil absorption during deep-fat frying," Advances in Food and Nutrition Research, vol. 57, 2009, pp. 209–234. A peer-reviewed review of the mechanisms governing oil pickup in fried foods. Establishes the experimental basis for the steam-barrier model.
  • K. Warner et al., "Quality of frying oils: review of measurement methods and the role of total polar materials," Lipid Technology, multiple issues. The technical literature on oil degradation, including the TPM (total polar materials) standard used in commercial kitchens to determine when to discard oil.
  • N. K. Pokorný, "Are natural antioxidants better — and safer — than synthetic antioxidants?" European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology, 2007. For students interested in the chemistry of oil oxidation and stabilization.