Nathan Myhrvold TED Talk Reveals Crazy Food Photo Technique Used In 'Modernist Cuisine'

One ballyhooed feature of Nathan Myhrvold's mammoth cooking tome Modernist Cuisine was its photography. Readers marveled at photos of popcorn popping taken at super-high speed. But the most remarked-upon series of photos involved mystifying cross-sections of food being cooked—in an oven, in pots and pans, in microwaves. Even Michael Ruhlman, in his relatively critical review of the book in the New York Times, wrote:

The food photography is excellent, but even more compelling are the 36 illustrated photographs using kitchen tools and appliances (a pressure cooker, a wok, a barbecue grill) that have been cut in half using an “abrasive water-jet cutter, an electrical discharge machining system, and other machine-shop tools,” the authors write, to help readers visualize what is happening inside a cooking vessel.

It was unclear how exactly they managed the actual dissection—but not anymore, thanks to Nathan Myhrvold's recent TED Talk. It turns out that the best way to photograph half a wok, or half an oven, or half a charcoal grill, is LITERALLY to cut to it in half. It's at least as tricky as it sounds—but Myhrvold is a man who knows how to solve tricky problems.

Here's the video:

Comments

[NER2]

04:23 PM on 08/12/2011

Why this should be hailed as some kind of breakthrough is totally beyond me. The idea of cutting things in half to better understand how they're constructed or operate isn't new, and high speed photography was pioneered long ago (people were making exposures at 1/1000 sec in the 1880’s. In addition, the narrator is incorrect in stating that until 20 years ago books on cooking neglected the science of cooking. See, for example, "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen," by Harold McGee, first published in 1984.

[sextonfan]

10:41 PM on 07/18/2011

Someone please watch the video and then explain to me how its done. I don't feel like watching :P

[NYnotLiberal]

07:45 AM on 07/19/2011

Very Simple. Stop time, and cut stuff in half. That's all there is to it.

[sextonfan]

08:07 AM on 07/19/2011

Thank you!

[Ellis Vener]

08:17 PM on 07/19/2011

Pretty much! Powerful high speed electronic flash (Broncolor Scoro or the Paul C Buff Einstein) does wonders for stopping time .

[Parkite]

05:09 PM on 07/20/2011

You really should watch it. It is way cool. But it is cut everything in half and have an ultra high speed camera and be very quick.