For those who don’t know what Modernist Cuisine is, I’ll fill you in. For those who came here for the box porn, just slow down for a minute so everyone can catch up. Modernist Cuisine is a self-published cookbook from Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, and a guy who holds something like 100 patents. A few years ago, on his own dime, Myhrvold, Chris Young, Maxime Bilet and a staff of 20 decided to reinvent modern cooking. The result is Modernist Cuisine, a six volume, 2,438 page cookbook that sells for $625 (you can get it on Amazon for only $461.62). You can read all about it on their website. It’s been an object of much speculation and desire, and multiple delays have caused pulses to race and palms to get sweaty as the actual street date nears. I pre-ordered my copy months ago, and last night I came home to find a giant box waiting for me.

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Box porn and a look at the book itself inside.

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And so I started unwrapping…

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…and unwrapping…

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…and unwrapping.

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Finally…paydirt!

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This first volume is actually volume 6, the Kitchen Manual, and it’s a ring-bound book of tables and charts to use in the kitchen. The other volumes could kill a large ox, but this one could probably only stun it a little. It’s full of numbers and facts. You want the cooking times and temperatures for warming fava beans, chickpeas, asparagus, corn, young carrots or zucchini in a sous vide? Page 147. How to make any kind of protein curd, from basic milk curd, to ricotta, to paneer and posset? Page 245. Want a table for cold gels (page 269) or hot gels (page 274)? The Kitchen Manual doesn’t have any photos, so it isn’t very sexy, but it’s got more facts than a whole shelf of cookbooks all put together.

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The book also reinvents recipe layouts.

Not sure how I feel about that yet, except that

it was about time someone did it.

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But there’s still more unwrapping to be done to get to the good stuff.

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This thing’s starting to resemble something from ALIEN…

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Any minute, volume 4 is going to leap out and

affix itself to my face and implant a little baby cookbook

inside my chest that will eventually burst out and

sous vide everyone in my building.

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I know books are magical and should be treated

with care, but eventually I just tipped the

damn thing over…

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…and started shaking it.

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My reward was a large white cube deposited

on my floor.

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Behold!

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The books come inside a clear plastic cube that

surrounds and protects them. Yes, for

$625 I better get some kind of fancy book cover.

Don’t make me have to cut up grocery bags to

cover my expensive new cookbooks.

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After birth.

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What one of the pages on meat looks like.

It is pretty, even if it is meat.

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