Molecular gastronomy

History

There are many branches of food science that study different aspects of food, such as safety, microbiology, preservation, chemistry, engineering and physics. Until the advent of molecular gastronomy, there was no formal discipline dedicated to studying the chemical processes of cooking in the home and in restaurants—as opposed to food preparation for the mass market. Food science has 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 practice that is now prominent in today's culinary world.

The term "molecular and physical gastronomy" was coined in 1988 by Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and French physical chemist Hervé This. In 1992, it became the title for a set of workshops held in Erice, Italy (originally titled "Science and Gastronomy") that brought together scientists and professional cooks for discussions about 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, based on exploring the science behind traditional cooking methods.

Kurti and This have been the co-directors of the "Molecular and Physical Gastronomy" meetings in Erice and had considered the creation of a formal discipline around the subjects discussed in the meetings. The American food science writer Harold McGee, was invited for the first Workshop. After Kurti's death in 1998, the name of the Erice workshops was 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 physicist Nicholas Kurti 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 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, the cooking of sausages by connecting them across a car battery, the digestion of protein by fresh pineapple juice and a reverse baked alaska—hot inside, cold outside—cooked in a microwave oven. Kurti was also an advocate of low temperature cooking, repeating 18th century experiments by the English scientist Benjamin Thompson by leaving a 2 kg (4.4 lb) 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 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. In 1995, he also has received a PhD in Physical Chemistry of Materials for which he wrote his thesis on "La gastronomie moléculaire et physique" (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. 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 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 This also authors a website and a pair of blogs on the subject in French and publishes monthly collaborations with French chef Pierre Gagnaire 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 in London and ran a cooking school in Berkeley, California. The one-time wife of a physicist, 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, Thomas had a conversation with Professor Ugo Valdrè of the University of Bologna 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 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 and French Physical Chemist 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:

Examples of sessions within these meetings have included:

Precursors

The idea of using techniques developed in chemistry to study food is not a new one, for instance the discipline of 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.

Evelyn G. Halliday and Isabel T. Noble

In 1943 the University of Chicago Press published a book entitled Food Chemistry and Cookery by the then University of Chicago Associate Professor of Home Economics Evelyn G. Halliday and University of Minnesota 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.

Belle Lowe of Iowa State College (1886–1961)

In 1932 the academic 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", "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:

In the second century BC, the anonymous author of a papyrus 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 Roman Apicius (André (ed), 1987), and recipes for stock preparation appear in classic texts (La Varenne, 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 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, 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, 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 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:

1. the social phenomena linked to culinary activity
2. the artistic component of culinary activity
3. the technical component of culinary activity

Original objectives

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

1. Investigating culinary and gastronomical proverbs, sayings and old wives' tales
2. Exploring existing recipes
3. Introducing new tools, ingredients and methods into the kitchen
4. Inventing new dishes
5. 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.

Eponymous recipes

New dishes named after famous scientists include:

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 gums and hydrocolloids produced by the commercial food processing 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:

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 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 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 Heston Blumenthal, Grant Achatz, Ferran Adrià, José Andrés, Sat Bains, Richard Blais, Marcel Vigneron, Sean Brock, Homaro Cantu, Michael Carlson, Wylie Dufresne, Pierre Gagnaire, Adam Melonas, Kevin Sousa, and Laurent Gras.

Despite their central role in the popularisation of science-based cuisine, both Adria and Blumenthal have expressed their frustration with the common mis-classification of their food and cooking as "molecular gastronomy", On 10 December 2006 Blumenthal and Harold McGee published a 'Statement on the "New Cookery" in the Observer in order to summarise what they saw as the central tenets of modern cuisine. Ferran Adria of El Bulli and Thomas Keller of the French Laundry and Per Se signed up to this and together released 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 published the Modernist Cuisine, which led many chefs to further classify molecular gastronomy versus modernist cuisine. Myhrvold believes that his cooking style should not be called molecular gastronomy.

Techniques, tools and ingredients