George Brewer

George Brewer is a scientist with a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. His 30 year professional career was spent with the Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft Company in research and development of microwave electron tubes, electron beam generation and focusing, and ion propulsion for spacecraft. He has contributed to or authored several books on electron dynamics and ion propulsion plus 27 technical papers published in recognized journals. He was also elected as a Fellow of the...See more

George Brewer is a scientist with a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. His 30 year professional career was spent with the Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft Company in research and development of microwave electron tubes, electron beam generation and focusing, and ion propulsion for spacecraft. He has contributed to or authored several books on electron dynamics and ion propulsion plus 27 technical papers published in recognized journals. He was also elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. What has all this to do with cooking? Now retired, Dr. Brewer applies his scientific mind to the art of cooking. He has been collecting and perfecting recipes for his family and friends for over three decades, and now presents the best of them for the public to enjoy. Perfecting has entailed taking copious notes and generating graphs and diagrams that document, for example, how heat penetrates and is distributed throughout a beef roast or turkey - very differently as we learn in this book due to their specific shapes and proportions. His daughters recall him photo-copying cross-sections of French bread that he'd baked in order to record the density of sought-after air holes. Dr. Brewer has also enjoyed world-wide travel and sampled fine cuisine throughout Europe, North America and Asia. He collected recipes from his favorite restaurants, and consulted cooking luminaries Julie Child and Harold McGee's works. He would then go home to test and re-test the recipes until the desired effect was attained. He shares these valuable lessons-learned and cooking tips in 289 footnotes, numerous references and quotes from his culinary mentors. Above all, Dr. Brewer aims to bring fine dining into every home. Many of the recipes hint at short cuts; for example, cutting preparation time by substituting a tested ready-made brand of tomato sauce. Step by step instructions carefully lead the reader through each recipe, with extra attention to the more delicate tasks such as thickening sauce to avoid those dreaded lumps. The all-important Sauces chapter occupies 50 pages of the entire 220 page book! Written in an easy narrative with personal vignettes on nearly every page, this book is a delight to read even if no teaspoon is leveled or roux is whisked. Enjoy learning about the physics of energy exchange and the behavior of collagen in a way that illuminates why careful cooking is so important, and then how to do it. Bon Appetit! See less