Photo by Nik Sharma
Anyone who has read and cooked from Nik Sharma’s first book, Season, knows that flavour — how to play with it, what subtle twists and variation of ingredients can enhance and develop it — is very much his specialist subject, but his follow-up, The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained + More Than 100 Essential Recipes, is a masterwork on the subject. He marries his background as a scientist with his life as a food writer and brings alive the chemistry and poetry behind cooking. It is an extraordinary achievement, and a blessing for cooks everywhere. It’s the sort of book to cook from with excitement and a glad heart, and one you will want to read and reread; it seems to expand with each revisit. There is not one recipe I don’t want to share with you, but with Thanksgiving coming up, it seemed only right to bring you his Sweet Potato Honey Beer Pie.
Reprinted from The Flavor Equation by Nik Sharma with permission by Chronicle Books, 2020
