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.'"

Comments

Re:Grammar?

[rm999]

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 confusing..(off topic)

[utenaslashed]

Every reply has "Reply to This"... and 'This et al.' could be abbreviated as 'These'..endless fun..pun?

More on This

[dargaud]

He has a monthly page in the french edition of Scientific American (Pour La Science) and several books out:

• 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 !

Re:More on This

[ivano]

Or go to the bible: McGee's "On food and cooking"

Re:Grammar?

[The Clockwork Troll]

This "this" is not that this. That "this" is this but this "this" is This. Got that?

We have Heston Blumenthal

[simong]

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?

Re:We have Heston Blumenthal

[otie]

As the article you linked says, Blumenthal just said the term "molecular gastronomy" is confusing and elitist. He doesn't mean the actual field where scientific precision is used to examine cooking is dead.

Re:We have Heston Blumenthal

[julesh]

One thing I've tried and loved is Blumenthal's ideas for low temperature cooking. There's something about a joint of beef, roast for 10 hours at 55 degrees, that is hard to imagine until you've tried it...

Re:We have Heston Blumenthal

[sjwaste]

Barbecue is very similar, but the method I think we're talking about is sous vide. Basically, the meat is sealed up in a vacuum bag and cooked at even a lower temp than bbq generally is done, usually at the "done" temperature of whatever it is you're cooking. So for a medium rare piece of beef, you put the pouch in 130 degree water for sometimes days until its done.

Barbecue uses slightly higher temperatures and smoke as its dry heat source. Also, the meat is not sealed up with its juices. So you get something similar (and delicious), but not quite the same. If you ever come across it, give it a shot.

But does it taste good?

[DrogMan]

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".

Re:But does it taste good?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Cooking, molecular or otherwise, is not about getting the recipe right to the nth decimal. As someone wrote in another post, you'll always have variations in products, temperatures, cooking ware etc. Completing a recipe to perfection has a lot to do with reacting to feedback: knowing your ingredients, smells, texture, taste. Mrs. Farmhouse got it right with her "looks ok" approach; the "scientific chef" was being a silly. If you ignore the feedback and just watch the egg timer, it won't come out as good.

Cooking science is about understanding what happens to food when we prepare it. It won't give us a runbook to achieve that perfect flavour, but it will help us to understand the process so that we get better at managing it.

Re:Grammar?

[Gordonjcp]

An object-orientated chef?
 

$this->makeMousse('chocolate');

Science and cookery

[19061969]

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)

lab vs home made.

[timmarhy]

There very good reasons that home made always tastes better then anything manufactured in a lab, and it's nothing to do with love or "vibe" or any of that hippy crap.

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.

Are there many Slashdot geeks who cook?

[pandrijeczko]

I must say that working (and playing) with computers all of my life, I thoroughly enjoy cooking as a welcome diversion from the world of silicon into the world of the organic.

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?

McGee On Food and Cooking is the bible

[Richard W.M. Jones]

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.

One-liner book review

[Stavr0]

If you're a science geek get these books
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.

Buy this book: Cookwise

[gosand]

One of the best cooking books I own (note: it isn't just a cookbook) is Cookwise by Shirley O. Corriher. You Good Eats fans would recognize her as the portly grey-haired lady that has appeared on some episodes. This book is absolutely fantastic, and describes the WHYs of cooking. It also has some great recipes. Ever wonder what makes cookies chewy, crispy, puffy, or flat? It shows a great chart in that section that shows "more of this" leads to "more of that". e.g. if you want to make your cookies chewy, use more brown sugar and bread flour.

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!

How many geeks like to cook?

[spun]

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.