Slashdot Mirror
The Father of Molecular Gastronomy Whips Up a New Formula
An anonymous reader writes "French chemist and cook Hervé This maintains his quest to find the scientific precision behind great tasting food. Chef This is just one of a growing number of cooks that approaches food from a scientific perspective; making recipes in a lab instead of in the kitchen. The difference is that This was one of the pioneers of the field. 'This and a colleague, the late Oxford physicist Nicholas Kurti, conducted the experiments in their spare time. In 1988, the pair coined a term to describe their nascent field: molecular gastronomy. The name has since been applied to the kitchen wizardry of chefs like el Bulli's Ferran Adria and Alinea's Grant Achatz. But This is interested in basic culinary knowledge -- not flashy preparations -- and has continued to accumulate his precisions, which now number some 25,000.'"
If you are confused by the psoting, read the *fine* article! It will clarify This! ;)
I hope I'm not the only one who had a time figuring out This article.
I've discovered a remarkable proof, but this margin is too small to contain it...
The guy's name is "This." Yes, you probably do need some sleep, and I do too because I thought the same thing at first ;)
This is his name.
Every reply has "Reply to This"... and 'This et al.' could be abbreviated as 'These'..endless fun..pun?
So, Who's on first?
You are wrong, sir. This is his name.
No, that's what I am asking you, what is his name?
Are you deaf? What's not his name, This is his name.
So what is his name?
(I'm so burned by This...)
Are you being a wise guy here? I don't care what his name isn't, I want to know what it is!
Note: I'm so not replying to myself more than once...
This is his name, and that's all there is to it!
Yes.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Launchy.net changed my world.
- Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor
- Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking
- In the Kitchen with Pierre Gagniere and Louis XIV
He's also a nice guy and I've exchanged cooking tips with him by email !Non-Linux Penguins ?
This "this" is not that this. That "this" is this but this "this" is This. Got that?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
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?
There was a (UK) TV program on recently with a bloke who specialises in puddings (Sweet Baby James or something it's called and he makes the most fantastic easy to make puddings!!!) and he challenged a scientific chef and Mrs Farmhouse cook to bake a Victoria sponge cake... The boffin at HQ went to great lengths about how important it was to measure the ingredients and combine them in such a way and timed the cooking to the second... Mrs. Farmhouse woman just put in some of this and enough of that and beat it up with a hand whisk until it looked OK then baked it "until it's done".
Then they took the cakes to the cake buyer/tester in Harrods. Guess which one tasted and looked the best? The Mrs. Farmhouse one, of-course!
There's also a series on right now hosted by some scientific cook bod - it's quite entertaining, (especially when he deep fried a whole chicken in the last series - left it in a second too long and it caught fire) but I can't help thinking his name ought to be a "new millenium" substitute for "Gordon Bennett"... It's "Heston Blumenthal".
I don't see what's very new about this story.
Come on, this is Slashdot. Half of the people here live off food that was flavor-engineered in a lab and vacu-formed into some sort of food-like eXtreme cheese thing.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
One of the best books to offer the basics of the 'science' of cooking is Harold Mcgee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Ki tchen/dp/0684800012/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-1551306-21 10061?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186389795&sr=8-1
This article reminds me of a course that used to be run at Bristol University called, "The physics of a Black Forest gateau" by Peter Barham. By all accounts, it was tremendously popular and always fully booked, so much so that other culinary treats were dealt with in the same manner (http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2005/874.html)
bang goes my karma... again...
I'm afraid of what happens if he decides to kick it up a notch.
BAM!
No, he's in right field!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This's in the kitchen but Who's on first and What's on second?
Your code isn't enterprise enough. I'm not usually a fan of enterprise code, but.. chocolate factory.. mmm..
There are no periods - full stop.
one reason, is that at home we have the ability to adapt to variations in the raw product, which you will get no matter how hard you try to control in a lab.
the other, is that the taste and smell receptors in our mouth are many factors more sensitive then lab equipment, meaning cooking "till it's done" is just a laymans way of saying a good cooks sense of smell is a much better indication of when food is ready then any lab insturment.
so while the IDEA that food can be scientifically expressed is correct, we are a LONG way from being able compete with those old nanna's down the road who make that awesome apple pie.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
http://www.speaknow.com.br/forum/index.php?topic=9 0.0
hehehe
Strive to be happy...
And you really think the following are made or formulated in Granny's kitchen and not by chemists in some industrial-sized 'lab':
Cola & other soft drinks
Yoghurt
Cheese in spray cans
Extruded corn snacks
Fast food burgers
etc.
AT&ROFLMAO
My general rules for cooking are as follows:
1. The wok is my best friend - in it I can do anything from simple stir fries to complex curries & other Asian dishes.
2. Stir, stir and stir some more.
3. Despite being a techie and part time programmer where accuracy and preparation are paramount, I NEVER obey a recipe. Cooking is always about tasting and making things up as you go along, I cannot stand the formality around eating - serve it up with a nice wine or two to friends and just get on with enjoying it.
4. Unless you do something really silly, or try to make a recipe that's far too complex, it's impossible to mess things up. Again, it's all about making it up as you go along with a rough knowledge of what herbs go with what meats or fish.
Any other programming cooks reading this?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yeah, that was a bit confusing.
But dosen't "Chef This" sound like a great title for a Food Network show?
Whoever modded the parent troll is an ass. Precisions exists in French (if you put an acute on the e), and it means details. The word doesn't exist in English since an uncountable noun has no plural.
Seems like a case of a faux-ami, non?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It depends on what the meaning of the word 'this' is.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Mod parent up.
Even better, a link to the book at Amazon: McGee On Food and Cooking (Hardcover). (The hardcover version is worth getting).
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
If you're a cooking geek ('foodie') get these books
If you're a science geek and a cooking geek you already have these books.
Molecular Gastronomy would make an excellent Slashdot book review.
Oh the misunderstandings!
Assimilate This! No wait... where are you going?!
- That's no knife... This is a knife!
- Really, he is?!
- This IS SPARTA!
- Really, he is?!
You get the picture.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
This is not an article!
His El Bulli restaurant beat out Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck in the Restaurant Top 50. He is also considered a pioneer of molecular gastronomy and has written several books on the subject. He was featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, with dishes like cotton candy fish.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think that the right tools help immensely with cooking. Get 3 very good knives, and keep them sharp. I would recommend Wusthof: 8" chefs knife, paring knife, and a bread knife. Get 3-4 plastic cutting boards of decent size. That will get you started, and try to avoid all the gadgets that you see. Learn good techniques, like how to do basic chopping/dicing, and you won't need the gadgets to do it for you.
Next, I would suggest you try some classic recipes. Use good ingredients, and learn what everything tastes like. And enjoy it!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
As for the people that confuse this 'molecular gastronomy' with 'Engineered food' and preprocessed food, you miss the point. It is about taking the normal ingredients, you could even get it from the organic food store if you want, but trying to understand what the background-cause is of, for example, the cake that went wrong, or how to make a well-done steak. This can all be done without any chemical additives, just using good ingredients and the knowledge of the cooking process. This knowledge is still lacking a lot, it is very complicated physics and chemistry here, you also need to have a background in both to fully understand what is happening.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Okay, I have a theory that a certain number of geeks love to cook and are really very good at it. I've been cooking since I was eight and I can make almost anything without looking at a recipe. I may be wrong, but I imagine some very good cooks post here.
One resource I can't recommend highly enough is Cook's Illustrated magazine, put out by the folks who do the PBS show, America's Test Kitchen. It has no advertisements, just in depth recipes and reviews you can trust. In each recipe, the highlight common problems and the solutions they've found through experimentation. They also tell about the failures and why they failed, and the science behind what went right and wrong.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How about diamond plated pans? Diamond has very good thermal conductivity and if done right the surface will have a low coefficient of friction.
:)
And how about an oven that can behave like a "thermos flask" instead of heating your kitchen[1]. Set the temperature you want, it should get there quick and stays there.
I'm sure we can use heat pipe and phase change technology somewhere.
[1] More efficient to use a heat pump for heating your kitchen. Dump the heat from the thermos oven slowly after you are done with the cooking, or save it for the next meal.
This ambiguity comes from this This (and all Thises). These Thises should know better than to be named for a demonstrative pronoun like "this".
This is another example of misnominy, the practice of naming people in really unfortunate ways. Movie stars started this trend by naming their kids after fruit and physical abstractions ("Apple", "River", "Moon", etc.) Now it's spreading to scientists and cooks.
Someone, please stop the insanity! For the children!
sigs, as if you care.
Amanda Hesser did a NYT piece on Sous Vide cooking a while back. Pretty good overview of the technique along with some history.
Fire!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
It doesn't just give recipes. It also explains the testing and experimenting that went into developing the recipes. An interesting and useful book, for sure. I've done a fair bit of cooking and baking with this book and it has never let me down.
There has been a show on the Food Network for 10 years which approaches food in the very same way -- Alton Brown's "Good Eats." I suggest it to any nerds out there who are interested in cooking but don't really enjoy the standard fare of cooking shows.
Needed for those many nights playing WOW and posting on /.
Mini robots go into your bloodstream from the "Dew" and convert raw sugars in your bloodstream to pure caffine.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Scientific approaches to gastronomy and other aspects of food preparation are NOT new. It just doesn't impinge on the attention of the nerd community very often.
...), management of kitchen crews, operations, and fincancing, design of industrial food and design and operation of its processing plants, and so on have been available for generations from prestigious universities, which (as is typical of universities) also do extensive research to advance the science and art.
Basic and advanced degrees in "food science" - including biochemistry, microbiology, science of taste, safe canning (home and industrial), cooking at all scales and with special requirements (home, restaurant, bakery, hospital, large institution, military base,
The departments are sometimes referred to as "home economics" - which is another source of confusion for people whose only exposure to food science is awareness of the "home economics" classes at their local high school. These classes bear about the same relationship to the food science departments at such a university as the "science" classes do to a nuclear physics department, or "auto shop" to the entire mechanical engineering department (including the factory automation specialization).
Another source of confusion is that, as with agriculture schools, some of the best schools in this specialty tend to be sited in rural and food-producing parts of the country - especially those with special problems. (For instance, one of the best has been the University of Washington, located in an area with one of the highest densities and species count of botulism spores.) So (as with agriculture, forestry, or much of the guts of medicine) you don't hear a lot about it in your engineering department or your Ivy League Ivory Tower.
So let's not assume, every time food science rears its head, that it's some new invention. Yes there are new inventions and new approaches in it all the time - just as with other technologies. But what's new is not the entire application of science to the subject, but a flash of visibility of this application to the inorganic "hi tech" community.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
even more important than what happens to food when you cook it... what happens to your body when you eat it.
e =1
e =1
through anecdotal evidence and an ever growing foundation of scientific evidence, the zone diet has shown me that it is much closer to optimal than the average american diet.
scientific data (still needs to grow a bit, but still quote compelling in its own right):
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2799700&pag
anecdotal evidence:
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1401/features/robin.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2799700&pag
my experience.
1. 178 lbs to 168 lbs in about 11 weeks.
2. net gain of muscle during the same time frame.
3. energy level is dramatically higher (b-ball 2 days a week (5 games yesterday), cardio 3 days a week, lifting weights 3 days a week).
4. my muscles don't get sore after workouts b/c the zone inhibits excess production of lactic acid (which gets in the the mscles and causes soreness).
5. my pulse rate dropped from 67 to 58.
6. my cardio went from dead after 10 minutes to 40 minutes plus with room to spare - after lifting weights for an hour - including leg work.
7. my "well being" meter is higher on my worst day in the zone compared to my best day not on the zone.
8. i'm rarely hungry and i don't crave carbohydrates. i can sit next to snickers at work and not eat any for months on end.
9. i'm more than half way to my goal of 6 pack abs by the end of the year - and i'm over 40 years old. i *never* had 6 pack abs when i was growing up and i tried hard. little did i know back then that every time i ate i instructed my body to retain fat and add more. exercise mitigated this to a point, but now that i use my diet to unlock my fat burning potential, getting the 6 pack abs is actually easy. in fact, i can't prevent it from happening *unless* i change my diet away from the zone.
10. my energy level after work is greater than my energy level at any point in the day in a non zone friendly diet.
i understand different folks have different bio-chemistries, but this is worth a shot *if* you care about your health. my experience is most folks don't. they live to eat, they don't eat to live.
The distinction in English between countables and uncountables is like an electric fence. If the word is especially limber, or the farmer allows the fence to sag or lose its zap, suddenly your stock of uncountables changes number. If the word "precision" in English becomes sufficiently influenced by the This French usage, it will jump without any difficulty. The distinction is not whether a word is countable or uncountable, but whether any sense of the word has a countable referent is accepted speech.
When I spot a word such as precisons, my first guess is that I'm dealing with a fast and sloppy typist who skipped the spell checker (aka any Firefox pre 2.0), my second guess is that I'm dealing with an ESL source, my third guess is that I'm dealing with a creative mind who has adapted the word to a countable referent for the purpose of expressing an idea more forcefully. Unfortunately, this kind of advanced word play tends not to come across so well to the global ESL audience, so the kind of person who is intense about communicating effectively will tend to damp down on this kind of word play when writing for a global audience.
I've long complained about the word "simplicity". It never manages to mean anything, because at the table feels free to accept it as a free variable in reference to whichever form of simplicity they would personally find most convenient. The duller knives in the drawer pull this off with ever recognizing that there was more than one choice. They soon give themselves away by usages of the word "simplicity" in the singular. The canonical example of this is Apple's one-button mouse. That's one form of simplicity, which benefits some people for some purposes, and hinders the rest of us. The original study on how fast a mouse could navigate to the file menu (by positioning it close to a corner of the screen) seems to ignore how long it takes to return the mouse to the text you were working on. The Mac screen at the time was 384x512 or something like that. Now my desktop is 2500 pixels wide, and I have to mouse over to a different time zone to activate the Applications menu on my Linux desktop, and then back again to whatever I wish to work on next. Thanks, Apple.
Now anyone who thinks that aside was off-topic belongs in the infomercial "never sharpen your knife again" knife drawer. It's on topic at two different levels simultaneously. The first level is that it now occurs to me that pedanticism is much like simplicity: there is never only one way to do it. You can be pedantic about the silly rules (this word is countable, that word isn't). Or you can be pedantic about the formative forces of the English language (a word becomes countable as soon as the speaker applies the word to a mutually understood countable referent). The other level is one's approach to cooking. You can be pedantic about working within the strictures of a proven recipe, or pedantic about the molecular composition of the desired end product.
The end game is to know which form of pedanticism best serves the immediate purpose, and break the rules freely once you know the rules. I'm entirely in favour of molecular gastronomy as a counter-movement from far too many recipes that tell you how to beat and when to fold, without ever discussing what you are egging toward.
I'm in the process of learning to make real Neapolitan style pizza. That will mean something to a lot of the obvious food fans posting here.
I'm planning ahead to the day when I will open a pizza parlor. Given that the pizza needs to be cooked between 800F-900F (depending on the source you're listening to) I'm trying to figure out a way to use some of the exhaust heat to cool the room the oven is in. Any insight here? Boiling water to power a compressor seems an obvious direction to explore.
C'mon guys, tech combined with food, what a great combination.