` Quietly brilliant & original... a thoughtful food writer who deserves to be better known`
- Bee Wilson, Sunday Times The Missing Ingredient is about what makes good food, & the first book to consider the intrinsic yet often forgotten role of time in creating the flavours & textures we love. Written through a series of encounters with ingredients, producers, cooks, shopkeepers & chefs, exploring everything from the brief period in which sugar caramelises, or the days required in the crucial process of fermentation, to the months of slow ripening & close attention that make a great cheddar, or the years needed for certain wines to reach their peak, Jenny Linford shows how, time & again, time itself is the invisible ingredient. From the patience & dedication of many food producers in fields & storehouses around the world to the rapid reactions required of any home cook at the hob, this book allows us to better understand our culinary lives.