Guru to a new generation of chefs from Chicago to Copenhagen, Spain's Ferran Adria has been featured on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of our times and touted by the press as an alchemist and a genius. His restaurant, El Bulli, was ranked first on Restaurant Magazine's Top 50 list in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and has retained this title in 2009. Considered food's preeminent futurist, a mad Catalonian scientist, and the godfather of culinary foam and other gastronomic advances, the Alicia Foundation distills Adria's culinary knowledge into a practical handbook that will more often be found face up on the counter than collecting dust on a shelf. A dictionary of present-day cooking, Modern Gastronomy: A to Z puts equal emphasis on the nature of ingredients, their reactions, and the processes they undergo to create the final product. You can quickly look up and find, in plain language, everything you need to know about the science of cooking and the art of combining flavors and textures. The first English translation of the bestselling Lexico Cientifico Gastronomico, this book's lexical format provides, for each ingredient or term, a definition, the ingredient's source, and suggestions for its use. A scientific exploration of the possibilities of food, this much-anticipated book includes a foreword by Harold McGee, author of On Food & Cooking and contributor to Nature, New York Times, Fine Cooking, and Physics Today. It is this rigorous scientific viewpoint that sets the book apart, enabling you to develop processes, tastes, and textures that give your new products a competitive edge.