Goals and Organization of this Book

This book has a dual goal: understanding—that is, of cooking theory, of how to cook—and performing—that is, mastery of a set of manual skills and the ability to apply them to a wide range of cooking styles and products.

This Tenth Edition retains the book’s basic approach with its focus on the fundamentals. The basic cooking methods (dry-heat methods, moist-heat methods, and so on) are introduced early. Then, within the main cooking chapters, the material is arranged by cooking method. In addition, Chapter 15, Cooking Methods for Meat, Poultry, and Fish, focuses directly on the common cooking methods for these products, allowing the student to master fundamental techniques, before exploring variations on these procedures unique to individual products in later chapters.