Over the past few months I have watched the entire 2012 Science and Cooking series. First, I have to give huge kudos to Harvard University for making this available to the public. As a novice home cook tinkerer I learned many important scientific concepts that have greatly helped my cooking. The class helped demystify the process of what happens molecularly while cooking. Some of the finest molecular gastronomy chefs in the world hail from Catalonia, Spain so watching this series requires a little bit of patience because several of the episodes are painstakingly translated, sentence by sentence from Catalonian to English. Doesn’t matter— worth spending the time listening to these generous chefs share their expertise and creative processes. Probably my favorite lectures were the America’s Test Kitchen class with Jack Bishop and the Bakistry lecture but they all have something to teach. Enjoy!

Every lecture you can learn something new.Tthe lecture with Wylie Dufreesne and Ted Russin shows how chefs and scientist are working together. The majority of the lectures that I have watched have been enlightening.

As a chef, working 14 hours every day doing the same fu.....ng food every day some time you get lost on the way. That is why always I try to open my mind to go forward and keep being creative and this lecture was really helpful I'd like see more of this sort of lectures

I'm a 17 year old and I love cooking and science, when I saw this I was like OMG so I downloaded all the video and I'm loving it.

Being a Chef and a devout researcher of avant garde cuisine, these lectures are incredibly inspiring. I've seen all but the white house chef's episode. If you have an open mind and a passion for understanding how the best chefs in the world think, I would highly recommend these public lectures. Johnny Kirk

I am a food scientist and was excited to see this series a hoped it would represent a refresher course. While each episode opens with the science, they rush through it to get to the interesting chefs who practice the applied science. I feel that a course that more accurately reflected the title would have had the chef and the scientist at the same time or had the scientist follow the chef and explain what is going on molecularly in each if the chef's creations. The food industry has a missing link between the science and applied and this course has the potential to fill that void but currently falls short. Other than that, I think that while some topics developed slowly and the translated episodes were hard to follow at times, the chef's applications were undoubtedly creatively brilliant, entertaining and idea provoking, which made it all worth watching.

This series of lectures are full of very useful information, but you have to be patient, take notes and rewind a lot. I applaud Harvard for making this available, as well mad respect for any interested cook who slogs their way though the verbal torture and comes away more informed.

I downloaded the series and watched most of the lectures and think the other reviewers are off base. I love this series!!! I would take the actual course in a heartbeat, as I am sure that a lot is missed in the taped lectures. As an aspiring chef, currently attending culinary school, I find these lectures more then interesting and gives audience to concepts that are taught in "theory" but not really.

Harold McGee was ok, the rest were shear torture. White House chef spoke 48 minutes about how making pastries can bring political parties together. I felt like I was sitting in a U.N.meeting with the ear piece that resembled a shoe, listening to chef's translator. This was several hours of my life I will never get back.

I watched lecture #1 & #7. Sadly, that's all it took to turn me off. The idea of the science behind cooking sounds fascinating to me. However, this class spends at least half the time (literally) introducing chefs and thanking tons of people. It's like watching an American Idol finale... watch 40 min of crap and 5 min of good stuff.