Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

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HISTORY
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors
would find many foods we eat today unrecognizable,
but they would likely find a meal at a restaurant
such as elBulli or The Fat Duck particularly
perplexing. There, foods have unexpected textures
and temperatures, and meals are served not
just on plates but in an array of specialized
serving vessels. Dish after meticulously crafted
dish arrives at the table even after diners are well
beyond sated, and leftovers are discarded, not
preserved for future use. Exotic fruits and vegetables
are combined and transformed in ways that
people who view food merely as a means of
subsistence would never contemplate. At these
restaurants, food is about art, not nutrition.
How did we get from our hunter-gatherer
origins to this era of culinary innovation? This
chapter outlines this process, starting with the
important role that cooking played in human
evolution. When early hominids harnessed fire and
learned to cook food, a series of physiological
changes followed. The agricultural revolution led
to another major advancement in food preparation,
helping to usher in the idea of cooking to improve
taste. Up to that time, cooking was primarily used
to make food digestible or to remove toxins, but
after the advent of agriculture, cooking became
less of a pure necessity and more of an art.
Later, in many early civilizations around the
world, the aristocracy played an important role in
the development of cuisine. Wealthy families hired
professional chefs to prepare their food, which led
to vast differences between peasant fare and
aristocratic food. We’ll look at the cuisines that
developed in some of the major world monarchies
and discuss the role the nobility played in fostering
this culinary advancement.
As cuisines diverged and matured around the
world, tradition and innovation often came into
conflict. Various culinary movements arose to
upend the traditions of the time, but the innovations
they introduced soon became codified as new
traditions. In France, for example, chefs such as
Antonin Carême and Auguste Escoffier established
strict culinary rules and codes that had a profound
influence on high-end cuisine as we know it in the
Western world today.
In response to those strict rules, the Nouvelle
cuisine movement developed in the mid-20th
century. Setting out to shake up the French
culinary establishment, the chefs associated with
this movement largely succeeded; they helped to
create a true revolution.
We will argue, however, that the ultimate
culinary revolution is the one that has taken place
in the past two decades. We call this the Modernist
movement, and we’ll look at what makes it so
revolutionary and so modern. We’ll examine the
various factors that set the stage for Modernist
innovations, including the revolution in industrialized
food in the 1950s; Ferran Adrià’s amazingly
creative work at elBulli, in Spain; Harold
McGee and the advent of food science for the
home chef; Heston Blumenthal’s embrace of
science and creativity at The Fat Duck, in England;
and the advent of the sous vide method.
Finally, we’ll discuss where the Modernist
revolution is todayand where it is headed.
Fire is the fundamental cooking tool.
4 VOLUME 1 ·· HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
HISTORY 5