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Today I attended a demonstration and book signing by Hervé This at the show room of Le-Sanctuaire. Fanny send me an email last week and I was able to take off.

For those who don’t know Hervé This see the wiki entry here.To make it simple we shall call him the father of molecular gastronomy. Mr. This is a physical chemist, very energetic and has a clear vision of the future of cuisine and how kitchens will be transformed. There is much more to know about Mr. This, and all this can be googled, here at google.com.

There was a lot of information in very short time, so I am trying to decipher my notes right now. I will elaborate on some more on the future. One of the greates take aways is that waht we (chefs) do is not molecular gastronomy, it is molecular cooking. Molecular gastronomy is what scientist like Hervé This are doing. He also put the scientific aspect into perspective and made me thing about many things I just stopped thinking about long time ago when I gave up the idea of studying chemistry before I started cooking. One of the things Hervé This pointed out was the nonsence of measuring volume when we actually should give weights in recipes. I made an blog entry about this earlier this month.
my notes

• molecular X

Molecular gastronomy – scientists experiment and analyze food in an controlled environment, labs, the result is not consumed by anybody in or outside the lab. The findings are shared with chefs. New technologies might evolve

Molecular cooking – chefs create dishes around that knowledge

Molecular technologies – are the tools used to do the cooking, thermal-circulator, separatory funnel, ultra-sonic bath to make hollandaise, etc

• NYU – experimental cuisine.(link to the homepage)

• culinary formalism

yes recipes are like novels a lot of words not much info. Mr This compared a average recipe with the book Ulysses. taking out all the non essential information ot comes to 10% information needed to recreate a dish/recipe. Well and that can be even expressed in formula. (More about that in the near future)

• science looks for the mechanisms of phenomena

• culinary constructivism

It is to act first from the artistic idea, then to place technique at the service of this idea. Some have named that “molecular cuisine”, or molecular gastronomy, that is not right, because molecular gastronomy is a science, and not one technology, and not one technique, nor an art.

Thus, I propose to you that we name this new movement,

“CULINARY CONSTRUCTIVISM”

And culinary art will be always grander if art passes before its realisation: Picasso said “When I have no more red, I take blue.”

Long live culinary art, long live chemistry, amongst persons (and people), and long live knowledge in general.

• gibbs – emulsion of egg white (or as Mr This calls it egg yellow) and oil. adding any sugar and flavor, cook or microwave
• culinaire moderne
• l’oeuf entier
• constructed and non fugurative cooking
• chocolate chantilly 200g water, 250g chocolate, cooled over ice and whip (chocolate is an oil so we can do the same with foie gras, beurre noisette, etc)
• perfect meringue cook at 140C until curst builds, reduce heat to 100C until cooked
• emulsify with ultrasonic probes
• ascorbic acid
• add pepper to stocks 8 minutes before finish
• grilled four does not need to be cooked anymore, perfect for tarts, cakes of mille feuille
• we perceive consitency of foods on the surface,hard chocolat on the outside with mousse in the inside and vice versa
• perception of complimentary colors – how can we apply this to food like sweet to sweet or sweet to acid
• un plat abstracte -abstract plates

Most of us agree that molecular gastronomy is not necessarily the luckiest pick for what is going on now in the culinary world. I prefer to call it “avent garde cuisine”, and it is just an evolutionary step in our kitchens. Well this subject has been discussed many times on other blogs and I don’t plan on discussing this again.

Though somehow I feel we can not rid the stigma of “I don’t like chemicals in my food” or “I was trained old school and don’t like the modern stuff”

As an offspring of a family of restaurateurs and chefs from my mother side and chemists from father side I somewhat hope to be able to relate to both statements above; and as hard as i try i can not.

As a chemist I would say we are surrounded by chemicals, we are composed by chemicals and we cook with chemicals. I just think of the two most used chemicals in any kitchen. H20 and NaCl. One we call hydrogen oxide or water, basis of life, our earth is covered by 70% of it and our bodies consist of an even higher percentage. The other sodium chloride or salt, essential to our vital functioning of our bodies and one of the first minerals mined by manhood.

As a chef looking through our shelfs we find even more complicated chemicals and compounds of organic and even inorganic matter. I really could elaborate on that matter and my father, uncle and three of my cousins all chemists would be proud of me doing so. I wont since I think I made my point. Chemicals are everywhere in our kitchen …. like it or not

The other statement I hear so often also stuns me. “..I learned to traditional way ..” of “…old school..”
that is great for you. Again, if 50.000 years ago manhood would have kept eating raw meat, harvested grains in their raw state and never changed we would still do so today. Manhood found, though not clear exactly when, that roasted meat was more tender, palatable and easier to chew and digest. Well here we go, the evolution of cooking started and ever since has been refined.

“.. but this is not what I meant, I mean I don’t like the processed stuff…” oh please. give me a break. ever since we started cooking we also tried to find ways to also preserve our food. First there we used salt, yes the same chemical we call NaCl, which we used to cure our meats with; smoke, black pepper, followed soon. We also learned to ferment and pickle, all these are processed foods. And yet they are integral part of our ancestors survival through winter and are still part of todays cooking. Anything we touch in our kitchen in order to modify it to make it palatable to our guests is a process. Just as simple as peeling a carrot is a process. Going out into the garden picking a tomato and cutting it in quarters and sprinkling it with NaCl is a even more complex process than just peeling a carrot.

Today we are at a point where we utilize our previous knowledge, apply it, question it, challenge it, redefine it or sometimes even toss it. We use science to understand the underlying physics and chemistry to deliver an even better product. What exactly is wrong with that? Barely 100 years ago we fired our stoves with wood, then came the gas. Anybody could imagine cooking without it? Well even wasteful from an energy standpoint we still do so. And over the years other technologies and techniques emerged, like electric stove tops, induction, sous vide, combi-ovens (yes love those RATIONALs). If wood would have been the best choice we would all still cook on wood fired stove tops. Don’t get me wrong there is a certain romantic to it, on the other hand I cant imagine getting wood in the morning, firing up the stove and wait an hour or two to get my first cup of coffee.

“… but you don’t understand what I am trying to say, I don’t want to use all these powders, when I don’t know what they are…”
Then read the label and learn about them. If you eat seaweed then agar shouldn’t be a stranger to you. Just because it is another form. If one seems not to have a problem using powdered sugar (and I am sure most can not tell me the chemical formula of sugar either) why would be agar or any other powdered or pure form of any substance so different?