Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

1
We explore several techniques
pioneered by This in this book,
including chocolate or Camembert
cheese blended into a whipped
cream-style foam (see page 4·281),
salt in oil (see page 330), and the
now ubiquitous 65 °C egg (see page
4·78).
THE HISTORY OF
Food Science
some and refuting others. He often works by doing
his own research; to test a claim from a medieval
cookbook, This roasted whole suckling pigs and
confirmed that cutting the head off after cooking
keeps the skin crisp, because it allows steam
trapped under the skin to escape.
In addition to examining “precisions,” This
created a formal notation for cooking called the
CDS/NPOS system. (CDS stands for “complex
dispersive system” and NPOS for “nonperiodical
organization of space.”) Similar in spirit to formal
mathematical notation or chemical formulae,
This’s system serves as an abstract description of
the processes and techniques used in cooking. He
believes this notation will be useful to chefs in
creating new dishes, although few chefs seem to
agree. The notation is so abstract that it has not
been widely adopted by either chefs or mainstream
food scientists.
In some cases, however, This has invented or
researched techniques that could be used as a
point of departure for new dishes. This and Pierre
Gagnaire have collaborated to come up with many
new recipes, which are featured on Gagnaire’s
website (pierre-gagnaire.com), some of which are
featured in this book.
Agriculture and food preservation have been around for
millennia (see page 6), but these disciplines were not widely
studied as sciences until the 19th century, when canning
and pasteurization were developed (see Louis Pasteur,
page 1·148). Today, food science is made of several different
disciplines, including food chemistry, food engineering,
and microbiology. The closely related field of agricultural
science often overlaps with food science.
Many food scientists work in the food-manufacturing
industry, at universities, or in government positions to
create new food products and to improve methods of
processing, packaging, distributing, and storing foods. For
some scientists, this means determining ways to get optimal
results from traditional cooking and food-processing
techniques such as baking, drying, and pasteurization.
Other food scientists research and develop new methods
In a 2010 paper in the journal Chemical Reviews,
the physicist Peter Barham and his coauthors
present an excellent summary of the key scientific
findings of molecular gastronomy to date. They
argue that it is an emerging scientific discipline.
Whether that assertion is true is an intriguing
question, but the answer is still unclear, at least to
us. Conventional food scientists, not “molecular
gastronomists,” are responsible for many of the
scientific findings reviewed in the paper.
Food science has origins that stretch back at
least a century (see Food Science, below), and the
discipline has been a major focus for thousands of
researchers in recent decades. What distinguishes
“molecular gastronomy” from other forms of food
science? Is there something really new here, or is
this just a case of applying a trendy new name?
The principal answer seems to be that what
Barham and his colleagues call molecular gastronomy
is focused on home and restaurant cooking.
Previously, food science tended to be applied
almost exclusively to large-scale commercial and
industrial food processing. Indeed, the birth of
food science as a discipline was driven largely by
the emergence of the packaged- and canned-food
industries in the early 20th century.
of food production and processing.
Agricultural scientists study crops and livestock, and
develop ways of improving quality and yield. They also may
research methods of converting agricultural commodities
into consumer food products.
There were roughly 17,000 people working in food and
agricultural science in the United States in 2008. About
20% of these scientists worked for manufacturing companies,
15% in educational institutions, and 7% for the federal
government (primarily the U.S. Department of
Agriculture).
Research on food and agricultural science is published in
dozens of academic journals around the world. These
journals run the gamut of food science disciplines, from
Cereal Science to Meat Science to Dairy Science, and from
Molecular Nutrition & Food Research to Food Hydrocolloids.
During most of its existence, food science was
all but invisible to restaurant chefs and the general
public. That’s because food science was mostly
funded by industry or by government agriculture
departments that wanted to boost the agricultural
economy on a large scale. Most of the findings
ascribed to molecular gastronomy were discovered
in the course of those activities.
There are also many issues that food science has
simply not investigated, because they are not
important to large-scale food manufacturers.
Nicholas Kurti is famous for saying, “It is a sad
reflection on our civilization that, while we can
and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere
of Venus, we do not know what goes on
inside our soufflés.” Nobody in industry cared
much about soufflés; you couldn’t make them in
bulk to put on supermarket shelves. And if nobody
in industry cared, food scientists tended not to
investigate. It’s not like the U.S. Department of
Agriculture or the National Science Foundation,
both major funders of academic research, care
much about soufflés either.
Starting in the mid-1980s, the situation changed
dramatically, as McGee, This, Barham, and others
shined the light of science on problems of home and
restaurant cooking. The main distinguishing
feature of molecular gastronomy is that it does care
about all types of food, including home and restaurant
food (and, yes, soufflés). In asking scientific
questions about these foods, Barham, This, and
their colleagues are performing a great service.
Heston Blumenthal and
The Fat Duck
In 1982, a British family on holiday turned up at
L’Oustau de Baumanière, a famous Michelin
three-star restaurant in Provence. Like many
tourists, the family had read about the restaurant
and decided to seek it out. None of the party had
ever been to a fine-dining restaurant, but since
they were in France, it seemed like a good thing to
try. It was by all accounts an excellent meal, which
is to be expected of such a restaurant.
What was less expected was the effect it had on
one of the dinersa 16-year-old boywho
decided that night to become a chef. The boy was
Heston Blumenthal, and 22 years later his restaurant,
The Fat Duck, would also have three Michelin
stars and would be proclaimed by many
food critics as the best restaurant on Earth.
Aside from a weeklong stage in the kitchen of
Raymond Blanc’s Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons,
Blumenthal had no formal culinary training. He
was born in 1966 in Berkshire, England (where he
still lives with his wife and children). After his
eye-opening dinner at Baumanière, he spent a
decade poring over Escoffier, Larousse Gastronomique,
and the other classic texts on French
cuisine, teaching himself to cook. When he could
afford it, he traveled to France on culinary research
missions. In 1986, he read Harold McGee’s
On Food and Cooking, an experience that he says
“literally changed my life.”
Blumenthal realized he could not accept what
was written in the classic texts at face value.
McGee’s book showed that they might have gotten
it wrong. Instead, Blumenthal came to question
and challenge everything about cooking until it
had been proved or demonstrated. That, of course,
is the essence of the scientific method. Although
Blumenthal is quick to argue that he is no scientist,
his skeptical and fact-driven approach to cuisine is
at its essence a form of scientific inquiry. This
attitude of exploration is perhaps the greatest thing
he learned from McGee.
In 1995, Blumenthal opened The Fat Duck,
serving a menu of classic brasserie dishes. Although
this menu featured radically different food than he
would begin serving several years later, he was
already using culinary science to perfect his dishes.
Heston Blumenthal stands at the front
door to his restaurant, The Fat Duck.
Heston Blumenthal isn’t the only
chef who found his calling via a
memorable teenage meal. For his
sixteenth birthday, Jean-George
Vongerichten’s parents took him
to the legendary Auberge de L’Ill,
a Michelin-three-star restaurant in
the town of Illhaeusern, located in
Alsace. The boy was so taken with
the experience that he, too,
decided on the spot to become a
chef. His first culinary job was as
an apprentice at the same restaurant,
under renowned chef Paul
Haeberlin.
48 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
HISTORY 49