The kitchen is one of the places where we least expect to find mathematics, save, for the quantities in recipes – “Four eggs, two tablespoons of flour” – or the times when we have to adapt a recipe that serves four to three or seven, say. Otherwise, one might imagine that mathematics doesn’t belong in the kitchen, where aromas and flavours reign, not numbers and formulas. But looking closer, behind the smoothies and the fries, the trained eye can detect and reveal other mechanisms. Mechanisms that regulate the functioning and structure of everyday objects and phenomena, and which encapsulate a lot of maths that is often anything but elementary. Why does a sausage cook quicker than a roast? What is the best shape for a kettle? What do the jet of water from a tap and a traffic jam have in common? This book, set entirely between stoves and sinks, unveils the mathematical secrets of the kitchen – and you don’t need a specific degree to read it.

Enrico Giusti is a former professor of Mathematical Analysis and History of Mathematics at the University of Florence. His scientific interests include the calculus of variations and minimal surfaces, and the history of mathematics in the 16th and 17th centuries, with digressions into the philosophy of mathematics. With Bollati Boringhieri, he has published: Analisi matematica 1 (Mathematical Analysis 1) (Third edition, revised and enlarged, 1985); Esercizi e complementi di analisi matematica ( Exercises and Complements of Mathematical Analysis) (2 vols, 1991-92); Euclides reformatus. La teoria delle proporzioni nella scuola galileiana (Eculides reformatus. The theory of proportions in the Galilean school) (1993); Ipotesi sulla natura degli oggetti matematici (Hypothesis on the Nature of Mathematical Objects) (1999) and La matematica in cucina (Mathematics in the Kitchen) (2004).