But what exactly is culinary
physics or molecular gastronomy gastrophysics ? Is it science? If so, how can
science revolutionize what is generally considered an artistic endeavor? This
article will answer all of those questions by exploring every facet of
molecular gastronomy -- the tools, the techniques and the ingredients.
It's Not Food
Science?
Molecular gastronomy
isn't the same as food science, which is concerned with analyzing the
chemical makeup of food and developing methods to process food on an industrial
scale. Molecular gastronomy takes advantage of many of the same scientific
principles, such as the use of emulsifiers, but on a much smaller scale. In
this respect, molecular gastronomy could be considered a branch of food
science.
Culinary Physics or molecular gastronomy is a
subdiscipline of food science that seeks to investigate, explain and make
practical use of the physical and chemical transformations of ingredients that
occur while cooking, as well as the social, artistic and technical components
of culinary and gastronomic phenomena in general. Molecular gastronomy is a
modern style of cooking, which is practiced by both scientists and food
professionals in many professional kitchens and labs and takes advantage of
many technical innovations from the scientific disciplines.
The term
"molecular gastronomy" was coined in 1992 by late Oxford physicist Nicholas
Kurti and the French INRA chemist Hervé This. Some chefs associated with the
term choose to reject its use, preferring other terms such as culinary physics
and experimental cuisine.
History
The father of
gastronomy, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, defined 'gastronomy' in his 1825
masterpiece, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), as
the knowledge and understanding of everything that relates to man as he eats.
Its purpose is to ensure the conservation of men, using the best food possible.
Nowadays, 'gastronomy' is used as a broad term that covers the art and science
of good cooking, including aesthetics, the qualities of raw materials, food
preparation and cooking techniques, flavor and the cultural history of cooking.
A wide range of established scientific disciplines relate to gastronomy, in
particular food chemistry and technology, sensory sciences and human nutrition.
A recent trend, pioneered by the British-Hungarian physicist Nicolas Kurti and
the French chemist Hervé This and fuelled by a close collaboration between
scientists and chefs, has led to the new term 'molecular gastronomy'. A closer
inspection of what molecular gastronomy is claimed to be shows that in most
cases it tends to involve few if any quantitative molecular considerations.
Despite the somewhat misleading terminology, or maybe exactly because of the
use of this terminology, molecular gastronomy has received a lot of publicity
among the general public and celebrated chefs. Some prominent chefs, including
Heston Blumenthal, from restaurant The Fat Duck, and Ferran Adrià, from
restaurant El Bulli, have issued disclaimers stating that their art and
style of cooking cannot be described by the concept of molecular gastronomy.
In a recent review of
molecular gastronomy, the British physicist Peter Barham and his colleagues
made a serious attempt to define what molecular gastronomy is and how it
differs from gastronomy. These authors advocate the very pragmatic viewpoint
that molecular gastronomy "should be considered as the scientific study of
why some food tastes terrible, some is mediocre, some good, and occasionally
some absolutely delicious”. In this way, they strike a delicate balance
between, on the one hand, considering food simply as materials with certain
properties described by food chemistry, and, on the other hand, taking into
account the empirical fact that there are very passionate feelings associated
with food and eating. Although according to this definition there seems to be
no specific reference to why the term 'molecular' is invoked, it is presupposed
that the field is based on the utilization of molecularly based sciences such
as chemistry for the scientific and systematic study of all aspects of food,
including raw materials, cooking procedures, flavor, acceptance of food and systematization
of recipes and cooking procedures. In contrast, aspects of human nutrition and
health are less emphasized. The Barham et al. review ultimately
concludes that "perhaps the most important objective of [molecular
gastronomy] should be to delineate the essential principles that underpin our
individual enjoyment of food”.
Molecular gastronomy
heavily relies on well-established sciences such as food chemistry, general
food science and food-processing technology, which are themselves, of course,
of seminal importance for the food industry, although it has been claimed that
there is very little science in the food industry. A related focus on the
chemistry of food is internalized in a less well-defined discipline called
'culinary chemistry', a term directly inspired by the title of an 1821 book by
the German chemist Friedrich Accum, who wrote about the practical aspects of
applying scientific principles, in particular chemistry, to cooking.
The application of
physical principles to study foods from a materials science perspective is
well-established in research on food physics and food biophysics, with a focus
on physical and physicochemical properties such as texture, foam stability,
emulsification properties, phase transformations, the physical principles
underlying cooking processes and so on. These approaches are traditionally
separated from sensory sciences, and they are often less concerned with
gastronomical considerations. Several popular science books are embodiments of
this category. The most celebrated monograph on the science of cooking is
Harold McGee's by now classic and encyclopedic monograph, On Food and
Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.
In recent years, the
collaboration between famous chefs and scientists has materialized in cookbooks
that contain a significant element of scientific explanations, such as Heston
Blumenthal's The Fat Duck Cookbook, and books that focus on the science
of particular types of food, such as the science of ice cream, chocolate, pizza
and sushi. The most recent development in writing on the science of cooking is
embodied in the monumental five-volume tome by Nathan Myhrvold and colleagues
on what is called 'Modernist Cuisine'. To date, Myhrvold's books provide the
most comprehensive accounts of the physical aspects of food and cooking and
could well qualify as a gastrophysical body of work, although he and his
colleagues do not use the term 'gastrophysics' in their five-volume series. In
fact, very little, if anything, that can be called 'scientific' is written
about gastrophysics, and there appear to be no published scientific papers
about gastrophysics.
It is the contention
of the present paper that gastrophysics has as its goal the demonstration that
fundamental principles of physics, in particular soft matter physics,
biophysical chemistry and molecular biophysics, can and should be brought
together in scientific work dealing with food and should focus on molecular
aspects, as well as scientific mechanisms and explanations, and their relation
to gastronomy to a much higher degree than traditional food chemistry and food
physics. The perspective on the plethora of possible research activities within
gastrophysics should be gastronomy itself. Gastrophysics takes gastronomy as
its departure point of inspiration and uses gastronomical problems as a driving
force. The intrinsic dynamics of this way of doing science is very similar to
what has been witnessed in recent decades in the case of another emerging field
of science, biological physics, which deals with biologically inspired physics
problems. Biological physics not only solves problems in biology but also
contributes to physics in general by revitalizing it and opening up a new
empirical world for physicists. In a similar vein, gastrophysics uses
gastronomical problems as a motor. Gastrophysics hence places itself as an
emerging new scientific and molecularly based subdiscipline at the borders
between soft matter physics and chemistry, culinary sciences, food chemistry
and molecular gastronomy.
It is to be expected
that a sufficiently original, ambitious and courageous research endeavor should
be able to make significant advances in defining the emerging and little
developed field of gastrophysics and demonstrate where it could lead. This is
not to say that the various experimental, computational and theoretical
methodologies, typical of the three pillars of modern natural science, which
should be applied to gastrophysics, are in a similarly less advanced and less
well-defined stage. On the contrary, the idea is to use, so to speak, the
'sharpest knives in the kitchen' to carve out the future of the field. These
'knives' include molecular simulation, single-molecule studies of taste, high-resolution
micro- and nanoscale visualization of macromolecular aggregates of food
molecules and particles, measurements of physical forces controlling the
stability of food formulations, molecular-structural characterization of raw
food materials and their transformation during preparation, cooking, ageing,
drying, conservation and fermentation, as well as the design of physical model
systems tailored to mimic, for example, the absorption of food molecules and
food particles in the intestines. All of these approaches are highly
sophisticated and advanced and are likely to make a strong impact on the
emerging field of gastrophysics.
The present paper
suggests that a unique and clear-cut opportunity exists to carve out the future
for gastrophysical research by focusing attention on a specific class of
materials, the marine macroalgae or seaweeds, which are virtually unexplored in
a quantitative gastronomical setting. The bidirectional value of the approach,
as implied by the analogy described above regarding biological physics, can
then be assessed by investigating (1) how gastrophysics contributes to
developing the algal cuisine and (2) how a focus on algae helps to frame
gastrophysics as an emerging science.
There are many
branches of food science, all of which study different aspects of food such as
safety, microbiology, preservation, chemistry, engineering, physics and the
like. Until the advent of molecular gastronomy, there was no formal scientific
discipline dedicated to studying the processes in regular cooking as done in
the home or in a restaurant. The aforementioned have mostly been concerned with
industrial food production and while the disciplines may overlap with each
other to varying degrees, they are considered separate areas of investigation.
Though many disparate
examples of the scientific investigation of cooking exist throughout history,
the creation of the discipline of molecular gastronomy was intended to bring
together what had previously been fragmented and isolated investigation into
the chemical and physical processes of cooking into an organized discipline
within food science to address what the other disciplines within food science
either do not cover, or cover in a manner intended for scientists rather than
cooks. These mere investigations into the scientific process of cooking have
unintentionally evolved into a revolutionary practice that is now prominent in
today's culinary world.
The term
"Molecular and Physical Gastronomy" was coined in 1992 by Hungarian
physicist Nicholas Kurti and French physical chemist Hervé This. It became the
title for a set of workshops held in Erice, Italy (originally titled
"Science and Gastronomy") that brought together scientists and
professional cooks for discussions on the science behind traditional cooking
preparations. Eventually, the shortened term "Molecular Gastronomy"
also became the name of the scientific discipline co-created by Kurti and This
to be based on exploring the science behind traditional cooking methods.
Kurti and This had
been the co-directors of the "Molecular and Physical Gastronomy"
meetings in Erice, along with the American food science writer Harold McGee,
and had considered the creation of a formal discipline around the subjects
discussed in the meetings. After Kurti's death in 1998, the name of the Erice
workshops was also changed by This to "The International Workshop on
Molecular Gastronomy 'N. Kurti'". This remained the sole director of the
subsequent workshops from 1999 through 2004 and continues his research in the
field of Molecular Gastronomy today.
University of Oxford
physicist Nicholas Kurti was an enthusiastic advocate of applying scientific
knowledge to culinary problems. He was one of the first television cooks in the
UK, hosting a black and white television show in 1969 entitled "The
Physicist in the Kitchen" where he demonstrated techniques such as using a
syringe to inject hot mince pies with brandy in order to avoid disturbing the
crust. That same year, he held a presentation for the Royal Society of London
(also entitled "The Physicist in the Kitchen") in which he is often
quoted to have stated:
I
think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do
measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on
inside our soufflés.
—Nicholas Kurti
During the
presentation Kurti demonstrated making meringue in a vacuum chamber, the
cooking of sausages by connecting them across a car battery, the digestion of protein
by fresh pineapple juice, and a reverse baked alaska - hot inside, cold outside
- cooked in a microwave oven. Kurti was also an advocate of low temperature
cooking, repeating 18th century experiments by the English scientist Benjamin
Thompson by leaving a 2 kg (4.4 lb) lamb joint in an oven at 80 °C
(176 °F). After 8.5 hours, both the inside and outside temperature of the
lamb joint were around 75 °C (167 °F), and the meat was tender and juicy.
Together with his wife, Giana Kurti, Nicholas Kurti edited an anthology on food
and science by fellows and foreign members of the Royal Society.
Hervé This started
collecting "culinary precisions" (old kitchen wives' tales and
cooking tricks) in the early 1980s and started testing these precisions to see
which ones held up; his collection now numbers some 25,000. He also has
received a PhD in Physical Chemistry of Materials for which he wrote his thesis
on molecular and physical gastronomy, served as an adviser to the French minister
of education, lectured internationally, and was invited to join the lab of
Nobel Prize winning molecular chemist Jean-Marie Lehn. This has published
several books in French, four of which have been translated into English, including
Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, Kitchen
Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking, Cooking: The Quintessential
Art, and Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary
Constructivism. He currently publishes a series of essays in French and
hosts free monthly seminars on molecular gastronomy at the INRA in France. He
gives free and public seminars on molecular gastronomy any month, and once a
year, he gives a public and free course on molecular gastronomy. Hervé also
authors a website and a pair of blogs on the subject in French and publishes
monthly collaborations with French chef Pierre Gagnaire on Gagnaire's website.
Though she is rarely
credited, the origins of the Erice workshops (originally entitled "Science
and Gastronomy") can be traced back to the cooking teacher Elizabeth
Cawdry Thomas who studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London and ran a cooking school
in Berkeley, CA. The one-time wife of a physicist, Thomas had many friends in
the scientific community and an interest in the science of cooking. In 1988
while attending a meeting at the Ettore Majorana Center for Scientific Culture
in Erice, Thomas had a conversation with Professor Ugo Valdrè of the University
of Bologna who agreed with her that the science of cooking was an undervalued
subject and encouraged her to organize a workshop at the Ettore Majorana
Center. Thomas eventually approached the director of the Ettore Majorana
center, physicist Antonino Zichichi who liked the idea. Thomas and Valdrè
approached Kurti to be the director of the workshop. By Kurti's invitation,
noted food science writer Harold McGee and French Physical Chemist Hervé This became
the co-organizers of the workshops, though McGee stepped down after the first
meeting in 1992.
Up until 2001, The
International Workshop on Molecular Gastronomy "N. Kurti" (IWMG) was
named the "International Workshops of Molecular and Physical
Gastronomy" (IWMPG). The first meeting was held in 1992 and the meetings
have continued every few years thereafter until the most recent in 2004. Each
meeting encompassed an overall theme broken down into multiple sessions over
the course of a few days.
The
focus of the workshops each year were as follows:
1992 - First Meeting
1995 - Sauces, or
dishes made from them
1997 - Heat in cooking
1999 - Food flavors -
how to get them, how to distribute them, how to keep them
2001 - Textures of
Food: How to create them?
2004 - Interactions of
food and liquids
Examples
of sessions within these meetings have included:
a) Chemical Reactions
in Cooking
b) Heat Conduction,
Convection and Transfer
c) Physical aspects of
food/liquid interaction
d) When liquid meets
food at low temperature
e) Solubility
problems, dispersion, texture/flavor relationship
f) Stability of flavor
Precursors
The idea of using
techniques developed in chemistry to study food is not a new one, for instance
the discipline of food science has existed for many years. Kurti and This
acknowledged this fact and though they decided that a new, organized and
specific discipline should be created within food science that investigated the
processes in regular cooking (as food science was primarily concerned with the
nutritional properties of food and developing methods to process food on an
industrial scale), there are several notable examples throughout history of
investigations into the science of everyday cooking recorded as far as back to
18th century.
Professors
Evelyn G. Halliday and Isabel T. Noble:
In 1943 the University of Chicago Press published a book entitled Food
Chemistry and Cookery by the then University of Chicago Associate Professor
of Home Economics Evelyn G. Halliday and University of Minnesota Associate
Professor of Home Economics Isabel T Noble. In the foreword of the 346 page book
the authors state that, "The main purpose of this book is to give an
understanding of the chemical principles upon which good practices in food
preparation and preservation are based."
The book includes
chapters such as "The Chemistry of Milk", "The Chemistry of
Baking Powders and Their Use in Baking", "The Chemistry of Vegetable
Cookery" and "Determination of Hydrogen Ion Concentration" and
contains numerous illustrations of lab experiments including such things as a Distillation
Apparatus for Vegetable Samples and a Pipette for Determining the
Relative Viscosity of Pectin Solutions. The professors had previously
published The Hows and Whys of Cooking in 1928.
Professor
Belle Lowe of Iowa State College (1886–1961): In 1932 a woman named Belle Lowe, then the professor
of Food and Nutrition at Iowa State College, published a book entitled Experimental
Cookery: From The Chemical And Physical Standpoint which became a standard
textbook for home economics courses across the United States. The book is an
exhaustively researched look into the science of everyday cooking referencing
hundreds of sources and including many experiments. At a length of over 600
pages with section titles such as "The Relation Of Cookery To Colloidal
Chemistry", "Coagulation Of Proteins", "The Factors
Affecting The Viscosity Of Cream And Ice Cream", "Syneresis",
"Hydrolysis Of Collagen" and "Changes In Cooked Meat And The
Cooking Of Meat", the volume rivals or exceeds the scope of many other
books on the subject, at a much earlier date.
Belle Lowe was born
near Utica, Missouri on February 7, 1886. She graduated from Chillicothe High
School and then received a teaching certificate (1907) from the Kirksville
State Normal School in Kirksville, Missouri. She also received a Ph. B. (1911)
and an M.S. (1934) from the University of Chicago. In 1957, Lowe received an
honorary Ph.D. from Iowa State College (University). In addition to
"Experimental Cookery", she published numerous articles on the
subject of the science of cooking. She died in 1961.
According to Hervé
This:
In the second century
BC, the anonymous author of a papyrus kept in London used a balance to
determine whether fermented meat was lighter than fresh meat. Since then, many
scientists have been interested in food and cooking. In particular, the
preparation of meat stock—the aqueous solution obtained by thermal processing
of animal tissues in water—has been of great interest. It was first mentioned
in the fourth century BC by Apicius (André (ed), 1987), and recipes for
stock preparation appear in classic texts (La Varenne, 1651; Menon, 1756; Carême
& Plumerey, 1981) and most French culinary books. Chemists have been
interested in meat stock preparation and, more generally, food preparation
since the eighteenth century (Lémery, 1705; Geoffrey le Cadet, 1733; Cadet de
Vaux, 1818; Darcet, 1830). Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier is perhaps the most
famous among them—in 1783, he studied the processes of stock preparation by
measuring density to evaluate quality (Lavoisier, 1783). In reporting the
results of his experiments, Lavoisier wrote, "Whenever one considers the
most familiar objects, the simplest things, it's impossible not to be surprised
to see how our ideas are vague and uncertain, and how, as a consequence, it is
important to fix them by experiments and facts" (author's translation). Of
course, Justus von Liebig should not be forgotten in the history of culinary
science (von Liebig, 1852) and stock was not his only concern. Another
important figure was Benjamin Thompson, later knighted Count Rumford, who
studied culinary transformations and made many proposals and inventions to
improve them, for example by inventing a special coffee pot for better brewing.
There are too many scientists who have contributed to the science of food
preparation to list here. — Hervé This, 2006
Marie-Antoine
Carême (1784–1833):
The concept of molecular gastronomy was perhaps presaged by Marie-Antoine
Carême, one of the most famous French chefs, who said in the early 19th century
that when making a food stock "the broth must come to a boil very slowly,
otherwise the albumin coagulates, hardens; the water, not having time to
penetrate the meat, prevents the gelatinous part of the osmazome from detaching
itself."
Objectives
The objectives of
molecular gastronomy, as defined by Hervé This are:
Current
objectives:
Looking for the
mechanisms of culinary transformations and processes (from a chemical and
physical point of view) in three areas:
1) the social
phenomena linked to culinary activity
2) the artistic
component of culinary activity
3) the technical
component of culinary activity
Original
objectives:
The original
fundamental objectives of molecular gastronomy were defined by This in his
doctoral dissertation as:
1) Investigating
culinary and gastronomical proverbs, sayings, and old wives' tales
2) Exploring existing
recipes
3) Introducing new
tools, ingredients and methods into the kitchen
4) Inventing new
dishes
5) Using molecular
gastronomy to help the general public understand the contribution of science to
society
However, This later
recognized points 3, 4 and 5 as being not entirely scientific endeavors (more
application of technology and educational), and has since revised the primary objectives
of molecular gastronomy.
Examples
Example areas of
investigation:
1) How ingredients are
changed by different cooking methods
2) How all the senses
play their own roles in our appreciation of food
3) The mechanisms of
aroma release and the perception of taste and flavor
4) How and why we
evolved our particular taste and flavor sense organs and our general food likes
and dislikes
5) How cooking methods
affect the eventual flavor and texture of food ingredients
6) How new cooking
methods might produce improved results of texture and flavor
7) How our brains
interpret the signals from all our senses to tell us the "flavor" of
food
8) How our enjoyment
of food is affected by other influences, our environment, our mood, how it is
presented, who prepares it, etc.
Example myths debunked
or explained:
1) The cooking time
for roast meat depends on the weight (true or myth?)
Examples of myths that
were true before, but not any more:
1) You need to add
salt to water when cooking green vegetables (not true with commercial salt)
Examples of debunked
myths:
1) Searing meat seals
in the juices (not true)
2) When cooking meat stock
you must start with cold water (not true).
Eponymous Recipes
New dishes named after
famous scientists include:
1)
Gibbs - infusing vanilla
pods in egg white with sugar, adding olive oil and then microwave cooking.
Named after physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903).
2)
Vauquelin - using orange
juice or cranberry juice with added sugar when whipping eggs to increase the viscosity
and to stabilize the foam, and then microwave cooking. Named after Nicolas
Vauquelin (1763–1829), one of Lavoisier's teachers.
3)
Baumé - soaking a
whole egg for a month in alcohol to create a coagulated egg. Named after the
French chemist Antoine Baumé (1728–1804).
As a Style of Cooking
The term molecular
gastronomy was originally intended to refer only to the scientific
investigation of cooking, though it has been adopted by a number of people and
applied to cooking itself or to describe a style of cuisine.
In the late 1990s and
early 2000s, the term started to be used to describe a new style of cooking in
which some chefs began to explore new possibilities in the kitchen by embracing
science, research, technological advances in equipment and various natural gums
and hydrocolloids produced by the commercial food processing industry. It has
since been used to describe the food and cooking of a number of famous chefs,
though many of them do not accept the term as a description of their style of
cooking.
Other names for the
style of cuisine practiced by these chefs include:
1) Avant-garde cuisine
2) Culinary
constructivism
3) Cocina de
vanguardia - term used by Ferran Adrià
4) Emotional cuisine
5) Experimental
cuisine
6) Forward-thinking
movement - term used at Grant Achatz's Alinea
7) Kitchen science
8) Modern cuisine
9) Modernist Cuisine,
title of cookbook endorsed by Ferran Adrià of El Bulli and David Chang
10) Molecular cuisine
11) Molecular cooking
12) New cuisine
13) New cookery
14) Nueva cocina
15) Progressive
cuisine
16) Techno-emotional
cuisine—term preferred by elBulli research and development chef Alain Devahive
17) Technologically
forward cuisine
18) Vanguard cuisine
19) Techno-cuisine
No singular name has
ever been applied in consensus, and the term "molecular gastronomy"
continues to be used often as a blanket term to refer to any and all of these
things - particularly in the media. Ferran Adrià hates the term "molecular
gastronomy" and prefers 'deconstructivist'
to describe his style of cooking. A 2006 open letter by Ferran Adria, Heston
Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and Harold McGee published in The Times used
no specific term, referring only to "a new approach to cooking" and
"our cooking".
Chefs
Chefs who are often
associated with molecular gastronomy because of their embrace of science
include Grant Achatz, Ferran Adrià, José Andrés, Sat Bains, Richard Blais, Marcel
Vigneron, Heston Blumenthal, Sean Brock, Homaro Cantu, Michael Carlson, Wylie
Dufresne, Pierre Gagnaire, Will Goldfarb, Adam Melonas, Randy Rucker, Kevin
Sousa, Sean Wilkinson, Will LaRue, RJ Cooper and Laurent Gras.
Frustrated with the
common mis-classification of their food and cooking as "molecular
gastronomy", several chefs often associated with the movement (Ferran
Adria of El Bulli, Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck, Thomas Keller of the
French Laundry and Per Se) have since repudiated the term, releasing a joint
statement in 2006 clarifying their approach to cooking, stating that the term
"molecular gastronomy" was coined in 1992 for a single workshop that
did not influence them, and that the term does not describe any style of
cooking.
In February 2011, Nathan
Myhrvold published the Modernist Cuisine, which led many chefs to
further classify molecular gastronomy versus modernist cuisine. Myhrvold
believes that his cooking style should not be called molecular gastronomy.
Here are some other
tools you might need to master molecular gastronomy:
1) Vacuum machine. Remember the sous vide
steak we talked about last section? If you really want to do the job right,
consider a vacuum sealer. A good model will evacuate the air from plastic bags
and then seal the bag tightly closed. You can also buy a thermal bath to
provide precise heating of your water bath.
2) Hypodermic
syringe. You may
shudder at the sight of a needle, but you may have to overcome your fear if you
want to practice molecular gastronomy. As we've already seen, syringes are
helpful in the process of spherification. Some chefs also use them to inject
liquids into meat to enhance flavor and texture.
3) Liquid nitrogen. At a temperature of -321 degrees F
(-196 degrees C), liquid nitrogen will flash freeze any food it touches. As it
boils away, it gives off a dense nitrogen fog that can add atmosphere and drama
to food preparation. Unfortunately, liquid nitrogen must be transported in
specially made flasks and can be dangerous if it touches skin. A safer
alternative is the Anti-Griddle, described next.
4) Anti-Griddle. The Anti-Griddle, a product of
PolyScience, looks like a traditional cooktop, but it doesn't heat up food. Its
-30 degrees F (-34 degrees C) surface instantly freezes sauces and purées or
freezes just the outer surfaces of a dish while maintaining a creamy center.
5) The Gastrovac. Manufactured by International
Cooking Concepts, the Gastrovac is three tools in one: a Crock-pot, a vacuum
pump and a heating plate. In its low-pressure, oxygen-free atmosphere, the
Gastrovac cooks food faster at lower temperatures, which helps the food
maintain its texture, color and nutrients. When the food is done warming, you
restore the pressure and create what ICC calls the "sponge effect."
The liquid rushes back into the food, bringing intense flavors with it.
Of course, you'll need
to have a well-stocked spice rack to accompany your high-end gadgets. We've
already discussed alginate and calcium chloride -- the two chemicals needed for
spherification. Another important gelling agent is methylcellulose,
which congeals in hot water, then becomes liquid again as it cools. Emulsifiers
are a must for maintaining a uniform dispersion of one liquid in another, such
as oil in water. Two popular emulsifiers are soy lecithin and xanthan
gum. Finally, more and more molecular gastronomists are turning to transglutanimase,
a chemical that causes proteins to stick together. Because meat is protein,
chefs can do inventive things with transglutaminase, such as removing all fat
from a steak and gluing it back together or fashioning noodles from shrimp
meat.
Molecular Gastronomy Techniques, Tools,
and Ingredients
1) Carbon dioxide
source, for adding bubbles and making foams
2) Foams can also be
made with an immersion blender
3) Liquid nitrogen,
for flash freezing and shattering
4) Ice cream maker,
often used to make unusual flavors, including savory
5) Anti-griddle, for
cooling and freezing
6) Thermal immersion
circulator for sous-vide (low temperature cooking)
7) Food dehydrator
8) Centrifuge
9) Maltodextrin - can
turn a high-fat liquid into a powder
10) Sugar substitutes
11) Enzymes
12) Lecithin - an emulsifier
and non-stick agent
13) Hydrocolloids such
as starch, gelatin, pectin, and natural gums - used as thickening agents, gelling
agents, emulsifying agents, and stabilizers, sometimes needed for foams
14) Transglutaminase -
a protein binder, called meat glue
15) Spherification - a
caviar-like effect
16) Syringe, for
injecting unexpected fillings
17) Edible paper made
from soybeans and potato starch, for use with edible fruit inks and an inkjet
printer
18) Aromatic
accompaniment: gases trapped in a bag, a serving device, or the food itself; an
aromatic substance presented as a garnish or inedible tableware; or a smell
produced by burning
19) Presentation style
is often whimsical or avant-garde, and may include unusual service ware
20) Unusual flavor
combinations (food pairings) are favored, such as combining savory and sweet
21) Using ultrasound
to achieve more precise cooking times
Molecular
Gastronomy Chefs:
1) Herve This
2) Grant Achatz
3) Ferran Adrià
4) José Andrés
5) Dave Arnold
6) Peter Barham
7) Heston Blumenthal
8) Homaro Cantu
9) Shirley Corriher
10) Wylie Dufresne
11) Luke Hayes-Alexander
12) Harold McGee
13) Adam Melonas
14) Don Mottram
15) Nathan Myhrvold
16) Russ Parsons
17) Alessandro Stratta
18) Marcel Vigneron
19) Robert Wolke
Molecular
Gastronomy Restaurants
1) Alex
2) Alinea
3) elBulli
4) Moto
5) The Fat Duck
6) Schwa
References:
Andres, Jose. "Spherification
101." StarChefs.com. November 2007. (Dec. 26, 2008)
http://starchefs.com/events/studio/techniques/JAndres/index.shtml
Barnes-Svarney, Patricia, ed.
"The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference." Macmillan.
1995.
Davidson, P. Michael. "Food
Additive." World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia. 2004.
"Gastronomy."
Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM. 2005.
Hesser, Amanda. "Under
Pressure." New York Times. Aug. 14, 2005. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/magazine/14CRYOVAC.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
Hogg, R. "Colloid." World
Book Multimedia Encyclopedia. 2004.
King, Émilie Boyer. "Food: his
passion, his science." The Christian Science Monitor. Feb. 18, 2004. (Dec.
26, 2008)http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0218/p11s02-lifo.html
Kurti, Nicholas and Hervé This.
"Chemistry and Physics in the Kitchen." Scientific American. April
1994.
Lempert, Phil. "What exactly is
molecular gastronomy?" MSNBC. May 20, 2008. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24740136/
McGrane, Sally. "The Father of
Molecular Gastronomy Whips Up a New Formula." Wired. July 24, 2007. (Dec.
26, 2008)http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-08/ps_foodchemist
McLaughlin, Lisa. "Home Cooks,
Meet Molecular Gastronomy." Time. Nov. 13, 2008. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858877,00.html
Pain, Elisabeth. "Molecular
Gastronomy: Something's Cooking." Science Careers. Nov. 2, 2007. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2007_11_02/caredit_a0700157
Palmer, Sharon. "Molecular
Gastronomy -- Discovering the 'Science of Deliciousness.'" Today's
Dietician. Vol. 8, No. 5. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/may2006pg44.shtml
Raiswell, James. "Molecular
Gastronomy." AskMen.com. (Dec. 26, 2008) http://www.askmen.com/fine_living/wine_dine_archive_150/195_wine_dine.html
Sitwell, William. "Hallelujah
for Delia and an end to Britain's food snobbery." The Daily Mail. Feb. 11,
2008. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-513770/Hallelujah-Delia-end-Britains-food-snobbery.html
This, Hervé. "Food for
tomorrow? How the scientific discipline of molecular gastronomy could change
the way we eat." EMBO reports 7. 2006. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v7/n11/full/7400850.html
Wells, Pete. "Eat 300 and Say
'Spherification.'" New York Times. Feb. 20, 2008. (Dec. 26,
2008)http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/dining/20coint.html
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