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For those who don't know, this is nothing new. Heston Blumenthal, who runs The Fat Duck at Bray, Berkshire, for those of you with a few hundred euros to spend on dinner, has been doing this for years. Blumenthal uses laboratory equipment because it gives better, more consistent results than standard cooking equipment and is designed to stand up to the workloads of a commercial kitchen, but he has extended this a long way to develop new ideas. I'm assuming that this guy knows about him and his work and decided to try to go one better (possibly because of his connection to a company famous for doing precisely that?)

Because it tastes awesome.

Some things just can't be ignored.

McDonald's does not "taste awesome" it tastes like a push fried burger made from frozen "meat" which might be 100% but certainly tastes nothing like any burger I've made and BBQ'd myself. I'm pretty much as far away from a vegan as you can get but the fries are crap and the burgers are rubbish, if its 11pm and you have the munchies then fine, but "awesome" for that you need to go to the Fat Duck that man can do things to animals that make them line up to be killed.

Yes its OT, but come one, McDonald's as "awesome" tasting? That's like saying Windows ME was Awesome in the beef eating pantheon of quality.

And his restaurant. He has become notorious for his creations such as smoked bacon flavoured ice cream and snail porridge (which is actually supposed to be a snail risotto made with oats). He also says that Molecular gastronomy is dead, so who do we believe?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/fullonfood_ labindex.shtmlHeston Blumenthal of http://www.fatduck.co.uk/The Fat Duck in the UK has approached domestic food from a scientific standpoint.

He works with chemists, physicists, psychologists and even neuroscientists in order to come up with some creations that sound crazy but taste incredible. Stuff like tobacco ice cream, sardine sorbet, and frying potatoes in syrup and injecting them with benzaldehyde to create marzipan chips (fries). He's one of the best chefs in europe.

There's no reason why you can't combine the two. For instance the 3-Michelin-starred Heston Blumenthal does this. See his weekly Guardian columns for more info. BAcon and Egg ice cream, anyone ?

Heston Blumenthal, the improbably named chef of the two-Michelin-star rated Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, England. He has a show on the Discovery Channel in the UK called Kitchen Chemistry where he discusses "the science behind cooking and how it affects the way that we perceive taste and flavour."

I've only eaten at his brasserie, but the food was superb. This chap knows what he's doing.

A UK chef called Heston Blumenthal has been similarly engaged on the quest to find the science behind cooking.

Recently voted "Chef's Chef of the Year", Blumenthal is proprieter of the Fat Duck restaurant and writes a regular cooking column in the Saturday edition of the Guardian newspaper.

In these articles he takes tenets of cooking law ("The water in which green vegetables are cooked *must* be salted", "High-temperature sealing of meat keeps in the juices") and either justifies them or blows them apart. He tests, tastes, tests, tastes, and consults food scientists until he understands more of the principles behind the cooking. (Both of those tenets, in case you're interested, turn out to be completely false.)

He has also enthused about cooking meat at very low-temperatures - I can recommend without reservation that you try it yourselves and see.

Read his Guardian articles here, and there are some others on his site.

A UK chef called Heston Blumenthal has been similarly engaged on the quest to find the science behind cooking.

Recently voted "Chef's Chef of the Year", Blumenthal is proprieter of the Fat Duck restaurant and writes a regular cooking column in the Saturday edition of the Guardian newspaper.

In these articles he takes tenets of cooking law ("The water in which green vegetables are cooked *must* be salted", "High-temperature sealing of meat keeps in the juices") and either justifies them or blows them apart. He tests, tastes, tests, tastes, and consults food scientists until he understands more of the principles behind the cooking. (Both of those tenets, in case you're interested, turn out to be completely false.)

He has also enthused about cooking meat at very low-temperatures - I can recommend without reservation that you try it yourselves and see.

Read his Guardian articles here, and there are some others on his site.