Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

4
Modernist cooking includes the use of
many ingredients that are unfamiliar and
that have names that sound scary and
unnatural. But there is no objective reason
to treat them any differently than refined
sugar, salt, vinegar, baking soda, or many
other ingredients we take for granted.
It is hard see any rational reasons to use sugar
refined from sugar cane or beets but to rule pectin
refined from orange peel out of bounds. Both
products result from a series of processing steps
that refine and purify a natural product. In both
cases, you can specify (and pay more for) “or ganic”
versions, if you wish.
If anything, Modernist ingredients are subjected
to higher safety standards than traditional
foods because they are highly purified and so must
meet strict FDA approval requirements to be
allowed in food. The manufacturers that make
these ingredients follow very stringent specifications
for purity because their industrial customers
are very demanding. Companies like Nestlé and
Coca- C ola that use these ingredients in their
packaged foods have billions of dollars at stake.
They perform thorough chemical analyses with
teams of chemists to ensure exact batch-to-batch
consistency. As a result, these products are far
purer and more consistent than anything else in
a chef’s kitchen.
Indeed, most Modernist ingredients have
received much more testing than the familiarseeming
food in our home pantries. Traditional
ingredients have been ushered past regulatory
review by a grandfather clause that goes by the
term “GRAS,” which stands for “generally recognized
as safe.” These foods have not been subjected
to carefully controlled tests and protocols.
It is often argued that sucrosecommon table
sugarwould face an uphill battle if it came up for
approval as a new food additive. After all, it is
refined in an industrial process, and it clearly can
cause harm by promoting obesity, diabetes, and
tooth decay. Because sucrose, which was originally
sold in small quantities in apothecary shops
as an exotic additive, met GRAS criteria, it has
largely avoided the intense regulatory scrutiny
that newer additives face.
In truth, the most important difference between
so-called “artificial” additives and traditional
additives like sucrose, baking soda, and
baking powder is that the newer additives were
com pletely tested for safety, whereas their older
GRAS cousins entered the market in more lax
times and thus escaped such testing.
Natural, Perhaps, but Not Better
Some Modernist ingredients are indeed artificial
in the sense that they are produced via chemical
synthesis. One example is ascorbic acid, better
known as vitamin C. Besides its use as a vitamin
essential for human nutrition, ascorbic acid is also
very good at preventing the oxidative reactions
that brown cut fruits or vegetables like apples,
avocadoes, and endives.
Vitamin C can be refined from natural sources,
such as rose hips (the fruit produced by rose
flowers). But ascorbic acid made in this way will
generally not be very pure because the source
material also contains extraneous substances.
Moreover, the amount of ascorbic acid present in
a particular rose hip depends on the plant’s
nutrition, the amount of sun it got, and other
variables. So the concentration of naturally
derived vitamin C tends to be highly variable.
Inconsistency of this kind is a common problem
with natural foods. Compare a peach at the peak
of ripeness taken directly from the tree with
a hard, unripe, out-of-season peach picked green
and then shipped thousands of miles. The two are
hard to recognize as the same fruit. That variability
can pose real problems when cooking and
developing new recipes.
But ascorbic acid can be synthesized easily, and
the synthetic compound is identical to the natural
product. It is much easier to purify, however, so its
strength and concentration can be guaranteed.
There is no scientific reason to prefer the natural
product, with its impurities and variable concentration,
to the pure synthetic. Indeed, just the
opposite is true.
The same can be said for baking soda and
baking powder, both caustic salts that are best
created synthetically. The Solvay process, a series
of chemical reactions, produces sodium bicarbonate
from salt brine and limestone. These ingredients
are also sometimes purified from mineral
deposits such as natron, a naturally occurring
caustic salt found in dry desert lake beds.
Neither approach is “natural” by most definitions,
yet most chefs don’t think of baking soda
and powder as unnatural because of their long
history and their ubiquity in our mothers’ and
grandmothers’ cupboards. The reality, however, is
that baking soda and powder are best used in pure
form, and that purity comes from either chemical
synthesis or chemical purification methods.
Modernist ingredientsfrom calcium salts
used in gelling hydrocolloids to myriad pure
versions of other nonflavor compoundsare no
different from baking soda in this regard. Here,
too, there is no scientific basis for labeling the
newer compounds as unnatural while embracing
baking soda, distilled vinegar, or other common
kitchen chemicals. Nor is there any reason to be
concerned about chemical engineering processes
that extract, synthesize, or purify food
ingredients.
Indeed, we can be reassured by the fact that the
nontraditional ingredients used in Modernist
cuisine have been used in high volume by the
packaged food industry, usually for decades. If
these products really caused harm, consumers
would be dropping like fliesbut of course they
are not. The only thing truly novel and modern
about these ingredients is their increasing use in
fine dining and avante-garde gastronomy.
Yet somein particular, certain traditionalist
chefshave persisted in claiming that Modernist
cuisine is associated with health or safety risks.
Some of them have even publicly attacked the use
of these ingredients (see Santi Santamaria Versus
elBulli, page 258). Scaremongering of this kind is
irresponsible. If there were actual evidence of
a health concern, complaints should have been
brought to the appropriate food authorities so
they could launch any investigations that are
warranted.
Decide for Yourself
The sagas of fiber, fat, and salt teach us that it is
very difficult to get the truth about the health
implications of dietary choices. Three main
factors cloud the issues. First, it takes a long time
and a lot of money to rigorously test the benefits
of a dietary system. Second, industrial food
companies and advocates can make a very good
living promoting claims, substantiated or not,
about dietary systems. Third, even when ideas
are proven to be false, they tend to linger as part
of the conventional wisdom or popular viewpoint.
Advocates want to keep selling diet books,
nutrition experts hate to admit that they are
wrong, doctors and health organizations want to
maintain an aura of authority, and food companies
want to keep selling products for which they
can claim health benefits.
Today we know that butter seems to be okay,
but trans fat-laden margarine could kill you: just
the opposite of the conventional wisdom a generation
ago. As medical science gains more understanding
of the underlying causes of heart disease,
cancer, stroke, and other common diseases, we
may learn that there are some other real villains in
what we eat. But it is also possible that we will find
that some of these diseases are, by and large,
unrelated to diet.
254 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
FOOD AND HEALTH 255