C&EN talks with Arielle Johnson, culinary chemist and author

Books about food often feature pretty, mouthwatering pictures of delicious dishes, not diagrams of chemical structures. But Arielle Johnson's Flavorama is less like a cookbook and more like an instruction manual about building flavor according to first principles. It features cooking techniques, a set of scientific laws of flavor, and playful, insightful drawings of the molecules involved in transforming food from mere nutritional necessity to something satisfying and even indulgent. Johnson is a PhD chemist and food scientist who has worked on TV programs, written for newspapers and magazines, and collaborated with renowned chefs around the world. This book combines her scientific experience and insights with visual and verbal metaphors to effectively communicate the complex sensations that are flavor. Johnson cites encountering Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking when she was a student as a formative experience. "That's obviously the classic work on cooking and cuisine and science," she