Elements Of The Table

In her pursuit of flavour, cook and writer Samin Nosrat has distilled the art of great cooking into its essence

- David Matthews

Every once in a while a book appears that becomes an indispensable kitchen companion for cooks the world over. With Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, Samin Nosrat may have just written the latest.

By distilling nearly 20 years’ experience in cooking, tasting and teaching into four simple principles, she has produced a volume that not only implores you to have faith in your own senses, but improves them, honing the skills that are applicable to cooking well. It’s a riposte to so many recipe-driven cookbooks that might look pretty and show you how to make a couple of things, but don’t actually make you a better cook.

“We all already know what tastes good,” Nosrat says. “So if you can take a step back and say ‘oh, this doesn’t taste good – how do I make it taste good?’