A cooking website for mad scientists.

Vacationing in the Dominican Republic several years ago, I had too much time on my hands and came up with an outrageously stupid way to use mathematical expressions for food recipes.

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Welcome to Cooking With Einstein.

While I really don’t know what sort of culinary artist Albert was, he certainly cooked in the field of physics, mathematics and defining a unified-field theory.

While recently vacationing in the Dominican Republic, I started trying

to fathom quantum mechanics (as best as an idiot can). I quickly realized I needed to ramp up my level of reading and brush up on my understanding and writing of mathematical equations and formulas.

The best way for me to do that was to liken them to something in the

everyday world that I understood: cooking recipes. From that idea, Cooking With Einstein resulted.

I hope you enjoy this different take on recipes for some great dishes. And I hope this might spur you on to take a closer look at the science of your choice, the brilliance of Albert The Nut Case, and most importantly, take the time to figure out your favorite recipes in formula/equation form and submit them here.

And to quote our fearless leader: “Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater.”
Albert Einstein, January 7, 1943

CookingWithEinstein.com

SECOND QUARTER 2014

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Trust me, it’s really not that hard.

Equations and formulas are simply symbolic notation, where letters and symbols represent the components of a thing. H2O is the commonly understood formula for water (two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen). Writing it as H2O saves 34 keystrokes and puts it into a language that allows it to be applied to a number of formulas in a multitude of scientific disciplines.

We’re going to do the same thing but instead of solving the problems of the world through science, we’re going to cook lasagna (or meatballs or whatever you’re hungry for).

Understanding math is like looking at a totally foreign language like Japanese or Arabic, where the symbols give no clue to pronunciation much yet meaning.

If you want to learn to read Japanese or Arabic, you need to learn new symbols, new words and new grammar. It’s the same with Cooking With Einstein, you also need to learn new symbols (like π for chop, θ for blend and Σ for dice) and new grammar (writing formulas in a logical and consistent manner).

Part of understanding a formula is understanding the symbols. You need to learn what each of the symbols are and what they mean. And there is a link to the basic symbols for ingredients, actions and application of heat that you can reference to understand the formulas and make your own.

You also need to concentrate on the new vocabulary of symbolic notation and take note of the “math grammar” — the way that it is written and how to understand the sequence of steps in the formulas. You don’t put the onions in last when making a red sauce. You need to be able to read the formula correctly.

A little bit of effort on learning the basics will produce huge benefits.

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