How To Bake π: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics

A tenured math professor in the rarefied field of category theory, Eugenia Cheng also has a passion for cooking, and in this delightful exploration of numbers she shows how closely the two are related. We learn, for example, how the béchamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number 5, and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard. The book isn't all about cooking, though; Cheng also has readers run the New York and Chicago marathons, take a closer look at St. Paul's Cathedral, visit Cinderella and Lewis Carroll, and ponder why we think of the tomato as a vegetable. The heart of the book is Cheng's work on category theory, a cutting-edge "mathematics of mathematics" that is about figuring out how math works.