Molecular gastronomy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Molecular gastronomy is a subdiscipline of food science

Food science

Food science is a study concerned with all technical aspects of foods, beginning with harvesting or slaughtering, and ending with its cooking and consumption, an ideology commonly referred to as "from field to fork"...

that seeks to investigate, explain and make practical use of the physical

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

and chemical

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

transformations of ingredients that occur while cooking

Cooking

Cooking is the process of preparing food by use of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions. Cooks themselves also vary widely in skill and training...

, 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 1988 by late Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

physicist Nicholas Kurti

Nicholas Kurti

Professor Nicholas Kurti FRS was a Hungarian-born physicist who lived in Oxford, UK, for most of his life. In his era, he was one of the leading experimental physicists....

and Hervé This

Hervé This

Hervé This is a French physical chemist who works for the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique at AgroParisTech, in Paris . His main area of scientific research is molecular gastronomy, that is the science of culinary phenomena .With the late Nicholas Kurti, he coined the...

. Some chefs associated with the term choose to reject its use, preferring other terms such as "culinary physics" and "experimental cuisine".

History

There are many branches of food science

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 epicurean 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

Nicholas Kurti

Professor Nicholas Kurti FRS was a Hungarian-born physicist who lived in Oxford, UK, for most of his life. In his era, he was one of the leading experimental physicists....

and French physical chemist Hervé This

Hervé This

. It became the title for a set of workshops held in Erice

Erice

Erice is a historic town and comune in the province of Trapani in Sicily, Italy.Erice is located on top of Mount Erice, at around 750m above sea level, overlooking the city of Trapani, the low western coast towards Marsala, the dramatic Punta del Saraceno and Capo san Vito to the north-east, and...

, 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

Harold McGee

Harold McGee is an American author who writes about the chemistry, technique and history of food and cooking and has written two seminal books on kitchen science. His first book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen was initially published in 1984. A greatly revised second...

, 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

University of Oxford

physicist Nicholas Kurti

Nicholas Kurti

Professor Nicholas Kurti FRS was a Hungarian-born physicist who lived in Oxford, UK, for most of his life. In his era, he was one of the leading experimental physicists....

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

Brandy

Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...

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:
During the presentation Kurti demonstrated making meringue in a vacuum chamber

Vacuum chamber

A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump. The resulting low pressure, commonly referred to as a vacuum, allows researchers to conduct physical experiments or to test mechanical devices which must operate in outer space...

, the cooking of sausages by connecting them across a car battery, the digestion of protein by fresh pineapple

Pineapple

Pineapple is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. It was given the name pineapple due to its resemblance to a pine cone. The pineapple is by far the most economically important plant in the Bromeliaceae...

juice, and a reverse baked alaska

Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska is a dessert made of ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake or Christmas pudding and topped with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for just long enough to firm the meringue...

- hot inside, cold outside - cooked in a microwave oven

Microwave oven

A microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that heats food by dielectric heating, using microwave radiation to heat polarized molecules within the food...

. Kurti was also an advocate of low temperature cooking

Low temperature cooking

Low-temperature cooking is a cooking technique, a variant of roasting, which is claimed to produce more tender and tasty results than traditional high-temperature roasting. In low-temperature cooking, the food to be cooked is cooked for a long period of time at a low temperature...

, repeating 18th century experiments by the English scientist Benjamin Thompson

Benjamin Thompson

Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford , FRS was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics. He also served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Loyalist forces in America during the American...

by leaving a 2 kg 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

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

Jean-Marie Lehn

Jean-Marie Lehn is a French chemist. He received the Nobel Prize together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his work in Chemistry, particularly his synthesis of the cryptands...

. 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

Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique

The Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique is a French public research institute dedicated to scientific studies surrounding the problems of agriculture...

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

Pierre Gagnaire

Pierre Gagnaire is a well known French chef, and is the Head Chef and owner of the eponymous Pierre Gagnaire restaurant at 6 rue Balzac in Paris . Gagnaire is an iconoclastic chef at the forefront of the fusion cuisine movement. Beginning his career in St...

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

Le Cordon Bleu

Le Cordon Bleu is the world's largest hospitality education institution, with 35 schools on five continents serving 20,000 students annually. Its primary education focus is on hospitality management and the culinary arts...

in London and ran a cooking school in Berkeley, CA. The one-time wife of a physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

, 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

Erice

, Thomas had a conversation with Professor Ugo Valdrè of the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

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

Antonino Zichichi

Antonino Zichichi is an Italian physicist who has worked in the field of nuclear physics.-Biography:Zichichi was born in Trapani, Sicily, in 1929. He has collaborated to several important discoveries in the field of subnuclear physics and has worked in some of the most important research...

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

Harold McGee

and French Physical Chemist Hervé This

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:

Chemical Reactions in Cooking
Heat Conduction, Convection and Transfer
Physical aspects of food/liquid interaction
When liquid meets food at low temperature
Solubility problems, dispersion, texture/flavour relationship
Stability of flavour

Precursors

The idea of using techniques developed in chemistry

Chemistry

to study food is not a new one, for instance the discipline of food science

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

University of Chicago Press

The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...

published a book entitled Food Chemistry and Cookery by the then University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

Associate Professor of Home Economics Evelyn G. Halliday and University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

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

Syneresis (chemistry)

Syneresis , in chemistry, is the extraction or expulsion of a liquid from a gel, as when lymph drains from a contracting clot of blood. Another example of syneresis is the collection of whey on the surface of yogurt...

”, “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
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....

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
Apicius
Apicius is the title of a collection of Roman cookery recipes, usually thought to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD and written in a language that is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin....

(André (ed), 1987), and recipes for stock preparation appear in classic texts (La Varenne
François Pierre La Varenne
François Pierre de la Varenne , Burgundian by birth, was the author of Le Cuisinier françois , the founding text of modern French cuisine. La Varenne broke with the Italian traditions that had revolutionized medieval French cookery in the 16th century...

, 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
Justus von Liebig
Justus von Liebig was a German chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and worked on the organization of organic chemistry. As a professor, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the...

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
Benjamin Thompson
Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford , FRS was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics. He also served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Loyalist forces in America during the American...

, 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

Marie-Antoine Carême

Marie Antoine Carême , known as the "King of Chefs, and the Chef of Kings" was an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as haute cuisine, the "high art" of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery favored by both international royalty and by the newly rich of...

, 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

Umami

Umami , popularly referred to as savoriness, is one of the five basic tastes together with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.-Etymology:Umami is a loanword from the Japanese meaning "pleasant savory taste". This particular writing was chosen by Professor Kikunae Ikeda from umai "delicious" and mi ...

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:

the social phenomena linked to culinary activity
the artistic component of culinary activity
the technical component of culinary activity

Original objectives:

The original fundamental objectives of molecular gastronomy were defined by This in his doctoral dissertation as:

Investigating culinary and gastronomical proverbs, sayings, and old wives' tales
Exploring existing recipes
Introducing new tools, ingredients and methods into the kitchen
Inventing new dishes
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 endeavours (more application of technology and educational), and has since revised the primary objectives of molecular gastronomy.

Examples

Example areas of investigation:

How ingredients are changed by different cooking methods
How all the senses play their own roles in our appreciation of food
The mechanisms of aroma release and the perception of taste and flavor
How and why we evolved our particular taste and flavor sense organs and our general food likes and dislikes
How cooking methods affect the eventual flavor and texture of food ingredients
How new cooking methods might produce improved results of texture and flavor
How our brains interpret the signals from all our senses to tell us the "flavor" of food
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:

You need to add salt to water when cooking green vegetables
Searing
Searing
Searing is a technique used in grilling, baking, braising, roasting, sautéing, etc., in which the surface of the food is cooked at high temperature so a caramelized crust forms. Similar techniques, browning and blackening, are typically used to sear all sides of a particular piece of meat, fish,...

meat seals in the juices
The cooking time for roast meat depends on the weight
When cooking meat stock
Stock (food)
Stock is a flavoured water preparation. It forms the basis of many dishes, particularly soups and sauces.- Preparation :Stock is made by simmering various ingredients in water, including some or all of the following...

you must start with cold water.

Eponymous recipes

New dishes named after famous scientists include:

Gibbs - infusing vanilla
Vanilla
Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla . The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod...

pods in egg
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...

white with sugar, adding olive oil
Olive oil
Olive oil is an oil obtained from the olive , a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps...

and then microwave
Microwave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...

cooking. Named after physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903).

Vauquelin - using orange juice
Orange juice
Orange juice is a popular beverage made from oranges. It is made by extraction from the fresh fruit, by desiccation and subsequent reconstitution of dried juice, or by concentration of the juice and the subsequent addition of water to the concentrate...

or cranberry juice
Cranberry juice
Cranberry juice is the juice of the cranberry. Commercially, it is sold in either as a pure juice, which is quite tart, or, more commonly, as cranberry juice "cocktail" or "drink" , in blends with other juices, such as apple or grape, or mixed with water and corn syrup, sugar, or an artificial...

with added sugar when whipping eggs to increase the viscosity
Viscosity
Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear or tensile stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness" or "internal friction". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity...

and to stabilize the foam, and then microwave
Microwave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...

cooking. Named after Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829), one of Lavoisier's teachers.

Baumé - soaking a whole egg for a month in alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

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 gum

Natural gum

Natural gums are polysaccharides of natural origin, capable of causing a large viscosity increase in solution, even at small concentrations. In the food industry they are used as thickening agents, gelling agents, emulsifying agents, and stabilizers...

s and hydrocolloids produced by the commercial food processing

Food processing

Food processing is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food or to transform food into other forms for consumption by humans or animals either in the home or by the food processing industry...

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:

Avant-garde cuisine
Culinary constructivism
Cocina de vanguardia - term used by Ferran Adrià
Emotional cuisine
Experimental cuisine
Kitchen science
Modern cuisine
Modernist Cuisine
Modernist Cuisine
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a cookbook by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. It was published by The Cooking Lab on 14 March 2011. The book is an encyclopedia and a guide to the science of contemporary cooking...

, title of seminal cookbook endorsed by Ferran Adrià of El Bulli and David Chang
David Chang
David Chang is a noted Korean-American chef. He is chef/owner of the Momofuku restaurant group, which includes Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Má Pêche, Milk Bar and Momofuku Ko in New York City, the latter for which he was awarded two Michelin stars in 2009, and Momofuku Seiōbo in...
Molecular cuisine
Molecular cooking
New cuisine
New cookery
Nueva cocina
Progressive cuisine
Techno-emotional cuisine—term preferred by elBulli research and development chef Alain Devahive
Technologically forward cuisine
Vanguard cuisine
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

Ferran Adrià

Ferran Adrià i Acosta is a Catalan chef born on May 14, 1962 in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. He was the head chef of the El Bulli restaurant in Roses on the Costa Brava, and is considered one of the best chefs in the world.-Career:...

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

Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997...

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

Grant Achatz

Grant Achatz is an American chef and restaurateur often identified as one of the leaders in molecular gastronomy or progressive cuisine...

, Ferran Adrià

Ferran Adrià

, José Andrés

José Andrés

José Ramón Andrés Puerta , known as José Andrés, is a Spanish chef often credited for bringing the small plates dining concept to America...

, Sat Bains

Sat Bains

Sat Bains is a chef and restaurateur from Derby, England. He runs Restaurant Sat Bains with Rooms, the only Michelin starred restaurant in Nottingham....

, Richard Blais

Richard Blais

Richard Blais is an American chef. He currently resides with his wife Jazmin in Atlanta, Georgia, and has two children, Riley Maddox and Embry Lotus. He received an AOS in culinary arts from The Culinary Institute of America and has studied under chefs Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, and Ferran Adria...

, Marcel Vigneron

Marcel Vigneron

Marcel Vigneron is an American chef best known as the runner-up of the second season of Top Chef, placing behind Ilan Hall...

, Heston Blumenthal

Heston Blumenthal

Heston Marc Blumenthal OBE is an English chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005...

, Sean Brock, Homaro Cantu

Homaro Cantu

Homaro Cantu is an inventor, entrepreneur, chef, and molecular gastronomer. He owns and operates the Cantu Designs Firm in Chicago, Illinois, United States as well as Moto Restaurant in Chicago.-Early childhood :...

, Michael Carlson

Michael Carlson

Michael Carlson is a chef and restaurateur from Chicago, Illinois. After dropping out of culinary school, Carlson got his start in the industry working under Paul Bartolotta. From there he studied abroad in Italy under Valentino Marcattilii, and in England under Heston Blumenthal...

, Wylie Dufresne

Wylie Dufresne

Wylie Dufresne is the chef and owner of wd~50 restaurant in Manhattan. Dufresne is a leading American proponent of molecular gastronomy, the movement to incorporate science and new techniques in the preparation and presentation of food.-Early life:...

, Pierre Gagnaire

Pierre Gagnaire

, Will Goldfarb, Adam Melonas

Adam Melonas

Adam Melonas is an Australian chef of Greek heritage.He currently works as Head Chef in Charge of the Lab in the Progressive Cuisine style of cooking.-Biography:...

, Randy Rucker, Kevin Sousa

Kevin Sousa

Kevin Sousa is chef/owner of Salt of the Earth, a restaurant which opened in September 2010 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sousa is among the leading proponents of creative American and modern cuisine in the United States.-Career:...

, Sean Wilkinson, Will LaRue 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

Nathan Myhrvold

Nathan Paul Myhrvold , formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. Myhrvold, usually with coinventors, holds 17 U.S. patents assigned to Microsoft and has applied for more than 500 patents. In addition, Myhrvold and coinventors hold 115 U.S...

published the Modernist Cuisine
Modernist Cuisine
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a cookbook by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. It was published by The Cooking Lab on 14 March 2011. The book is an encyclopedia and a guide to the science of contemporary cooking...

, which led many chefs to further classify molecular gastronomy versus modernist cuisine. Myhrvold believes that his cooking style should not be called molecular gastonomy.

Techniques, tools, and ingredients

Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

source, for adding bubbles and making foams
Foam (culinary)
Foam has been used in many forms in the history of cooking: for example, whipped cream, meringue, and mousse are all foams. In these cases, the incorporation of air or another gas creates a lighter texture and/or different mouth feel....
Foam
Foam (culinary)
Foam has been used in many forms in the history of cooking: for example, whipped cream, meringue, and mousse are all foams. In these cases, the incorporation of air or another gas creates a lighter texture and/or different mouth feel....

s can also be made with an immersion blender
Immersion blender
An immersion blender, or 'stick blender' is a kitchen appliance to blend ingredients or puree food in the container in which they are being prepared...
Liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen is nitrogen in a liquid state at a very low temperature. It is produced industrially by fractional distillation of liquid air. Liquid nitrogen is a colourless clear liquid with density of 0.807 g/mL at its boiling point and a dielectric constant of 1.4...

, for flash freezing and shattering
Ice cream maker
Ice cream maker
A domestic ice cream maker or ice cream freezer is a machine used to make small quantities of ice cream at home. Ice cream makers may stir the mixture by hand-cranking or with an electric motor, and may chill the ice cream by using a freezing mixture, by pre-cooling the machine in a freezer, or by...

, often used to make unusual flavors, including savory
Savory
Savory or Savoury may refer to:* Savory , herbs of the genus Satureja, particularly :** Summer savory , an annual herb** Winter savory , a perennial herb* Savoriness, a type of taste....
Anti-griddle, for cooling and freezing
Thermal immersion circulator
Thermal immersion circulator
A thermal immersion circulator is an electrically powered device that circulates and heats a warm fluid kept at an accurate and stable temperature. It is used in process, environmental, microbiological, hazardous waste, and other laboratories...

for sous-vide
Sous-vide
Sous-vide is a method of cooking food sealed in airtight plastic bags in a water bath for a long time—72 hours is not unusual—at an accurately determined temperature much lower than normally used for cooking, typically around...

(low temperature cooking)
Food dehydrator
Food dehydrator
Food drying is a practice used to preserve fruit, vegetables and animal proteins after harvest since antiquity, and a food dehydrator refers to a device that removes moisture from food to aid in its preservation. A food dehydrator uses a heat source and air flow to reduce the water content of foods...
Centrifuge
Centrifuge
A centrifuge is a piece of equipment, generally driven by an electric motor , that puts an object in rotation around a fixed axis, applying a force perpendicular to the axis...
Maltodextrin
Maltodextrin
Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide that is used as a food additive. It is produced from starch by partial hydrolysis and is usually found as a creamy-white hygroscopic spraydried powder. Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or...

- can turn a high-fat liquid into a powder
Sugar substitute
Sugar substitute
A sugar substitute is a food additive that duplicates the effect of sugar in taste, usually with less food energy. Some sugar substitutes are natural and some are synthetic. Those that are not natural are, in general, called artificial sweeteners....

s
Enzyme
Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...

s
Lecithin
Lecithin
Lecithin is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues, and in egg yolk, composed of phosphoric acid, choline, fatty acids, glycerol, glycolipids, triglycerides, and phospholipids .The word lecithin was originally coined in 1847 by...

- an emulsifier and non-stick agent
Hydrocolloids such as starch
Starch
Starch or amylum is a carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined together by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by all green plants as an energy store...

, gelatin
Gelatin
Gelatin is a translucent, colorless, brittle , flavorless solid substance, derived from the collagen inside animals' skin and bones. It is commonly used as a gelling agent in food, pharmaceuticals, photography, and cosmetic manufacturing. Substances containing gelatin or functioning in a similar...

, pectin
Pectin
Pectin is a structural heteropolysaccharide contained in the primary cell walls of terrestrial plants. It was first isolated and described in 1825 by Henri Braconnot...

, and natural gum
Natural gum
Natural gums are polysaccharides of natural origin, capable of causing a large viscosity increase in solution, even at small concentrations. In the food industry they are used as thickening agents, gelling agents, emulsifying agents, and stabilizers...

s - used as thickening agent
Thickening agent
Thickening agents, or thickeners, is the term applied to substances which increase the viscosity of a solution or liquid/solid mixture without substantially modifying its other properties; although most frequently applied to foods where the target property is taste, the term also is applicable to...

s, gelling agents, emulsifying agents
Emulsion
An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible . Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloids. Although the terms colloid and emulsion are sometimes used interchangeably, emulsion is used when both the dispersed and the...

, and stabilizers, sometimes needed for foams
Transglutaminase
Transglutaminase
Transglutaminases are a family of enzymes that catalyze the formation of a covalent bond between a free amine group and the gamma-carboxamid group of protein- or peptide-bound glutamine. Bonds formed by transglutaminase exhibit high resistance to proteolytic degradation.Transglutaminases were...

- a protein binder, called meat glue
Spherification
Spherification
Spherification is the culinary process of shaping a liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble caviar. The technique was originally discovered by Unilever in the 1950s Spherification is the culinary process of shaping a liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble...

- a caviar
Caviar
Caviar, sometimes called black caviar, is a luxury delicacy, consisting of processed, salted, non-fertilized sturgeon roe. The roe can be "fresh" or pasteurized, the latter having much less culinary and economic value....

-like effect
Syringe
Syringe
A syringe is a simple pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube , allowing the syringe to take in and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube...

, for injecting unexpected fillings
Edible paper made from soybeans and potato starch, for use with edible fruit inks and an inkjet printer
Inkjet printer
An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost up to thousands of...
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
Presentation style is often whimsical or avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

, and may include unusual serviceware
Unusual flavor combinations (food pairings) are favored, such as combining savory and sweet
Using ultrasound
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is thus not separated from "normal" sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is...

to achieve more precise cooking times

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Precursors

Objectives

Examples

Eponymous recipes

As a style of cooking

Chefs

Techniques, tools, and ingredients

See also

Further reading

External links