Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a 2011 cookbook by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. The book is an encyclopedia and a guide to the science of contemporary cooking. It is notable for the use of elaborate equipment that many non-professional kitchens lack (sous vide machines, vacuum-chamber sealers, culinary centrifuges, culinary torches, high-precision gram scales) and for its lush photography, particularly its tricky cross-sectional images of ovens, barbecue grills, and woks, apparently caught in the act of cooking the food inside them, though this isn't physically possible; rather, each individual part of the cooking apparatus was hand-cut in a nearby metal shop and then photographed, the food—already cut in half—was shot at high shutter speed, and the i