Book excerpt: It has been nearly a decade since the third edition of Engineering Properties of Foods was published, and food structure/microstructure remains a subject of research interest. In fact, significant developments have taken place in the area of high pressure processing (HPP), which has been approved for pasteurization of food by the Food and Drug Administration. Kinetic data related to HPP have proven important for validation of pressure-assisted pasteurization. Due to these developments, three new chapters have been added to the Fourth Edition: Food Microstructure Analysis Glass Transition in Foods Kinetics and Process Design for High-Pressure Processing The text focuses on elucidating the engineering aspects of food properties and their variations, supplemented by representative data. Chapters have been updated and revised to include recent developments. The book presents data on physical, chemical, and biological properties, illustrating their relevance and practical importance. The topics range from surface properties, rheological properties, and thermal properties to thermodynamic, dielectric, and gas exchange properties. The chapters follow a consistent format for ease of use. Each chapter contains an introduction, food property definition, measurement procedure, modeling, representative data compilation, and applications.