Credit: OSCAR BURRIEL/PHOTOLIBRARY
STREWN ACROSS THE WORKBENCH are vacuum jars; an ultrasonic mixer; reflux columns; a scattering of glass separators; some thermal baths; a canister of liquid nitrogen; and even the odd mass spectrometer. But this isn't a science laboratory. From the lush mouth-watering aromas and sizzling sounds in the background, you can immediately tell it's a kitchen – one where the staple tools of scientific endeavour are being co-opted to produce novel dishes for some of the world's most fêted restaurants.
There's a whole new movement in the world of food, in which chefs are collaborating with research scientists to teach themselves the chemistry and physics of cuisine – taking their culinary reactions back to first principles. Armed with this knowledge, and a load of high-tech gear, they are cooking up scientific storms in some of the most famous kitchens across the globe.
Even academics are getting excited about the results. "I don't understand how anyone can cook without such kit," exclaims Peter Barham, a physicist at Bristol University in England. Colin Osborne of the Royal Society of Chemistry in London is also enthused: these chefs "are using unusual methods to produce exciting dishes that would be impossible without modern science," he says.
You may wonder what's wrong with our long-established culinary traditions. The thing is, many culturally ingrained cooking methods are simply sub-optimal – or just plain wrong. Osborne gives the example of frying meat to seal in moisture: weighing it reveals that moisture is actually lost in the process.
Another example is the age-old technique of adding salt to boiling vegetables, the idea being to raise the water's boiling point and thus cook the vegetables faster. In fact, the amount of salt we would typically add won't raise the temperature significantly – or improve the flavour, since only a miniscule amount is absorbed.
Hervé This, director of the Molecular Gastronomy team at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Paris, spends much of his time trying to disprove these culinary old wives' tales. Since 1980, This has collected more than 20,000 examples of these culinary proverbs in French cookery books alone. In some of his research, he works alongside Parisian chef, Pierre Gagnaire – whose restaurant is ranked fourth in world by the U.K.'s Restaurant Magazine.
Examples of the questions This is tackling include whether it's better to add vinaigrette to potato salad while the potatoes are still hot, and whether mayonnaise fails when made by a woman who is menstruating. One by one, he is empirically testing these folkloric adages – and disproving the more absurd (the answer to the latter is unequivocally 'no').
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French foodie Hervé This (right), shown here with chef Pierre Gagnaire, has disproved many culinary old wives' tales by testing them empirically. (Image: Jacques Gavard)
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It's seriously important work, says Barham. "If you understand what's going on in cooking, you'll be better equipped to improve it."
He contends that it's difficult to get good results from cookbooks, because recipes are typically poorly written. Think of the number of times you've followed a recipe to the letter, only to have it turn out too sloppy, crunchy or otherwise less than optimal. In stark contrast, Barham notes, scientific papers are subject to peer review, whereby experts pore over experiments to ensure they can be accurately reproduced.
He cites a recipe for a roast that calls for 20 minutes cooking time, plus another 20 minutes for every kilogram of meat – the meat is cooked when the centre has reached around 55°C. In reality, though, when you double the thickness of a roast it takes four times as long to cook through, and nine times as long when you treble the thickness.
"The cooking time depends on the square of the thinnest dimension of the meat and not the weight," Barham stresses. "Use the cookbook and you'll either have a large raw joint or a small burnt one. Use physics and you'll have perfectly cooked meat."
Culinary Alchemy
It is about time that the science of food reached chefs as a subject. Learning by rote is extremely limiting in gaining access to the why of cooking and it makes it difficult if not impossible to embrace new ingredients.
In teaching chefs about indigenous Australian ingredients it necessitated informing those keen to learn of the basics of taste. Even now, the seven flavours (sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent, aromatic and toast) are poorly understood in terms of how they balance on our palates or impact our smell/taste senses. (For those interested, including all of the flavours in any one dish will improve its appeal. Consider the Caesar salad. Also sweet balances sour, salt balances bitter and toast or umami as it is sometimes called, provides and essential depth and fullness.)
Following the path of Harold Magee, Herve This has done a huge service to the culinary profession. Now it is a matter of getting away from the tricks and gimmicks and more into a better understanding that this art has a deep basis in science.