Most people have heard of molecular gastronomy, which is the art of preparing food using the chemical and physical transformations of foods.
Some have had good experiences with it, while others... well, haven't.
It all started in 1980, when a physical chemist named Hervé This had a soufflé mishap in his kitchen. Hervé had all the ingredients called for by the recipe and followed all the procedures correctly, except for one infinitesimal detail: he whisked three eggs into the mix simultaneously as opposed to one by one, like the recipe said. This alone caused his soufflé to suffer an unfortunate deflation. However, this mishap made him wonder why we have to follow discrete steps when we cook. It became clear to him that not all cuisine is intuitive skill, but also following the natural and chemical properties of food, which make things happen for a reason.
Thus began the quirky, spirited marriage of art and science in the culinary world, or at least it would’ve begun, but this love story would have to get Shakespeared before it could proceed. Thanks to the art and science dichotomy that is still very prevalent today, cooking and chemistry would need to remain star-crossed lovers for a bit. Food critics and chefs of Hervé’s time resisted the concept of molecular gastronomy adamantly. To them, culinary art was a craft that required training, talent, skill, and creativity, not principles of physics and organic chemistry.
Regardless of the cultural opposition, Hervé and his partner in match-making, an Oxford physicist named Nicholas Kurti developed a lab kitchen where they tried experimenting with the why of cooking—why mix the liquid ingredients separate from the solid? Why whisk for this long? Why bake at this temperature?
What resulted from their experiments was a breakthrough in the art/science dichotomy that had scientists and chefs joining in the same endeavor (albeit for different reasons). This joining in chemical matrimony developed a new art—molecular gastronomy—that uses chemical and physical properties of foods to produce delicious, unusual, quirky combinations, such as olive oil powder, invisible ravioli, spheric ice cocktails, and powder strawberry ice cream.
So, without further ado, sit back, relax and enjoy some fresh carrot air:
If we're honest with ourselves, who actually wants to eat carrot air? Or honey caviar??!! (Not me, that's for sure).
But what truly matters about molecular cuisine is not just another creative outlet for talented souls, or a deeper insight into the amazing processes that cooking entails. What matters is that a bridge between art and science was established. In a society that has cheapened science into a way to make more money and devalued art as an impractical discipline that belongs under the hobbies category, these two fascinating fields require a great amount of reconciliation, and molecular gastronomy is a creative way to accomplish that.
