For years, a new culinary trend called ‘molecular cooking’ has been touted as the most exciting development in haute cuisine. It is now the newest fashion for chefs to offer their customers fake caviar made from sodium alginate and calcium, burning sherbets, spaghetti made from vegetables, and instant ice cream, fast-frozen using liquid nitrogen.
What is molecular gastronomy? Is it only a temporary trend for people who are prepared to spend a small fortune on the latest in fine food, or is it here to stay? Is it a useful technique for both the average chef and anyone preparing dinner for their family? What does it mean for the future of food preparation? What are we going to eat tomorrow?
For example, these are new Dishes named after Famous Chemists
Since 2005, new dishes, produced on the basis of the results of molecular gastronomy, have been named after famous chemists or scientists, so people are now eating ‘chemistry’. This is one way to fight the public’s fear of science and to promote the diffusion of knowledge.
Gibbs
When an egg white is whipped with oil, a white emulsion is obtained. If this emulsion is cooked in a microwave oven, water heats and expands. At that time, the temperature is about 100 °C, which is higher than the coagulation temperature of egg-white proteins. The emulsion is then trapped into a gel. Of course, oil does not necessarily taste good, but imagine infusing vanilla pods in egg white, dissolving sugar into the mixture and adding very good olive oil before microwave cooking. The product is called a Gibbs, after the famous physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903).
Vauquelin
When an egg white is whipped, a small quantity of foam is formed: about 300 ml for one egg white. Why not more? As whipped egg white consists primarily of water (around 90%), proteins and air, it is easy to discover that adding water will produce more foam. If the foam is cooked in a microwave oven, a chemically jellified foam is formed. To achieve a better-tasting product, use orange juice or cranberry juice instead of water, and add sugar to increase the viscosity and to stabilize the foam before cooking. This new dish is named after Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829), one of Lavoisier’s teachers.
Baumé
Have you ever put a whole egg into alcohol? If you are patient enough, ethanol will permeate the shell and promote coagulation. After about one month, the result is a strange coagulated egg called a Baumé, after the French chemist Antoine Baumé (1728–1804).
Another trend is using liquid nitrogen for cooking. A great example in the video below.
Molecular Gastronomy: Where Food Meets Science
Sources
Hervé This
Scientific Director of the Fondation Science & Culture Alimentaire (Académie des sciences), and head of the INRA Molecular Gastronomy Group at the Laboratoire de chimie analytique, Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon, Paris, France, and at the Laboratoire de chimie des interactions moléculaires, Collège de France, Paris, France.
