The Flemish Primitives aims to bring together chefs and scientists to promote culinary innovation. The last two editions held in Brugge focused on food pairing and new technologies. This year the event had moved to Oostende and the more spacious Kursaal (a good choice!). The event had also been stretched over two days, starting with 10 master classes in five parallel sessions on Sunday followed by a Gala dinner prepared by 13 Belgian chefs. The second day followed the format from previous years. The focus was on a group of Belgian chefs, the so-called Flemish Primitives as well as specially invited guests from abroad including René Redzepi and Michel Bras. All chefs prepared food live on stage. In between the chefs there was also time for two sessions with researchers from KU Leuven and a presentation of Modernist Cuisine by Chris Young. (more…)

I recently blogged about the public science and cooking lectures at Harvard to let you know that videos from the lectures are available for download. The public lectures accompany the course SPU-27: Science and Cooking (non-official pdf with syllabus of the course). I just got an email that they have an open position for a preceptor (a kind of lecturer). Responsibilities include:

• Work with (and report to) the faculty members who are the principal course instructors, to prepare lecture materials, lab experiments, homework assignments, and examination questions.
• Assist with lecturing as necessary.
• Manage the kitchen lab space, including maintaining the inventory of equipment and food supplies, as well as ensuring food-safety status.
• Coordinate with visiting guest chefs and lecturers, including managing their itineraries during campus visits.

Interestingly they are looking for someone with an advanced degree in physics, chemistry or a related field, preferably with a PhD. But they do not ask for knowledge about or interest in food which is kind of surprising… But they hope to get someone who speaks Spanish or Catalan – take that as a pointer to all the great work done by Ferran Adria, Jose Andres and Joan Roca, as well as the Alicia Foundation. The application deadline is April 4th. More information can be found on their homepage

Sample #4: Precious instant coffee with hot and freezing milk. My favorite!

As part of the molecular gastronomy seminar in Copenhagen a group of food science students and aspiring chefs who meet regularily in Gastronomisk legestue (= gastronomic playroom) gave a short presentation of their work. With a yearly budget of €660 and no scientific or commercial obligations the goal is to let science and craft meet in order to foster culinary creativity. There are many notable chef-scientist collaborations in the realms of molecular gastronomy and modernist cuisine, but this is the first time I’ve heard about an initiative that establishes a dialogue between scientists and chefs while they are still students. Molecular gastronomy will always be an interdisciplinary field and what better way to encourage such a collaboration than in a “playroom”? The students are allowed to use course labs at Copenhagen University, and in return they are asked to do a least one event each year – in 2010 they contributed to Kulturnatten (= Culture night). I admire the initiative and I encouraged Mathias Skovmand-Larsen, one of the founders, to start blogging so the rest of the world can take part in their experiments. Their presentation included 4 samples for the audience to taste. My favorite was (more…)

Flown in directly from Seattle, Chris Young presented Modernist Cuisine at The Flemish Primitives today. In the picture: presumably the first copy in Europe It’s backordered now (see Nathan’s long posts on this) due to high sales. It actually reached as high as #38 on Amazon’s overall sales rank.  I had 5 minutes to take a look at the books today and I can only say wow! These books mark a new era for everyone interested in a scientific and technological approach to cooking! Immediately the feeling struck me: there is nothing more to blog about now. But Chris reassured me (as he also did in my recent interview with him) that there is plenty more to dig into. Phew. Expect more about The Flemish Primitives 2011 in the coming days.

Michael Bom Frøst addressed complexity in meals based on experiments done at noma

What’s in a meal? – The title of associate professor Michael Bom Frøst‘s presentation at the recent seminar on molecular gastronomy in Copenhagen may seem surprisingly simple, but it turned out that a main topic of his presentation was in fact complexity and how it influences the meal experience. Together with PhD student Line Holler Mielby he conducted experiments in a real restaurant setting and given that the experiment took place in noma‘s chambre séparée and that some of noma’s chefs helped out in the kitchen you can imagine how easy it was to find volunteers. Previous studies have suggested a correlation between complexity and liking following an inverted U-shaped curve, suggesting that there is an optimum amount of complexity for maximum pleasure as shown in the figure below [1]. The main purpose of the experiment was to test this hypothesis. The theory also suggests that due to the exposure effect, diners who often eat “complex” food at high end restaurants would prefer more complexity compared to people who eat high end food less often. To address this question it was made sure that the test group included people with and without experience of high end restaurant food. (more…)

Pia Snitkjær’s thesis on Investigations of meat stock from a molecular gastronomy perspective can be downloaded free of charge. Part I includes an excellent introduction to molecular gastronomy, part II covers meat stocks with and without red wine.

Pia Snitkjær was the first student in the molecular gastronomy project at the University of Copenhagen to complete her studies. She defended her PhD thesis on Investigations of meat stock from a molecular gastronomy perspective in December last year, and this was also the topic of her presentation at the recent seminar on molecular gastronomy at the University of Copenhagen. Meat stock is typically prepared by boiling meat, bones, vegetables, spices and herbs, and after straining the remaining liquid it is reduced in volume by further boiling. The central question in the thesis was how the reduction affects the flavor and texture of the stock. Cookbooks only specify the concentration factor, but not the time needed to achieve this reduction.

If you’re only interested in the conclusion from a gastronomic perspective the take home message was (more…)

Foamy strawberries with coriander (cilantro) from TGRWT #3 turned out to be a delicious combination. Could it possibly be a category 2d predicted aroma similarity?

As mentioned in my previous post about the flavor pairing presentation given by Wender Bredie as part of the Copenhagen seminar on molecular gastronomy I’m really happy that the topic has been brought into the scientific community. At the same time is has also become very clear to me that the term flavor pairing needs some clarification. First of all I have come to realize that the the term flavor pairing is slightly misleadning, and I wonder if aroma similarity perhaps is a more precise term. As I see it, today the term flavor pairing is used in a range of different ways: (more…)

Wender Bredie presented results from experiments designed to test the flavor pairing hypothesis

A topic that I was particularily excited to hear about at the molecular gastronomy seminar in Copenhagen was flavor pairing. Since Heston Blumenthal presented his white chocolate and caviar combination based on amines in 2002 and Francois Benzi of Firmenich the pork liver-jasmine combination based on indole the idea has been further elaborated by Bernard Lahousse and Lieven De Couvreur who launched the foodpairing website and by me in the TGRWT food blogging event. Despite the interest and fascination it is fair to say the flavor pairing is still controversial – see for instance the discussion with in particular Jorge Ruiz. What is clearly lacking in the field is a more stringent scientific approach (as well as someone with time, interest, a sensory panel and the money to finance the activities…). It was therefore great to hear that sensory science professor Wender Bredie together with PhD student Ditte Hartvig actually set out to test the flavor pairing hypothesis formulated as: if major volatiles are shared between two foods it may very well be that they go well together. To achieve this they used a sensory panel to assess the odor of food pairs mixed and unmixed. Bredie proposed that a hyper addition of odor intensities would perhaps be the holy grail of flavor pairing – that is if the intensity of the mixed odors would be more than the sum of the unmixed intensities. Or even better: if there would be a hyper additive effect on pleasantness.  (more…)

Homepage of the molecular gastronomy project at the University of Copenhagen (sorry – only in Danish as far as I know)

The research project Molecular gastronomy – the scientific study of deliciousness and its physical and chemical basis (Danish homepage) funded by The Danish Research Council was started in 2006. Led by prof. Leif Skibsted people from the Food Chemistry (Jens Risbo, Pia Snitkær Nielsen, Louise Mørch Mortensen) as well as the Sensory Science group (Michael Bom Frøst, Wender Bredie, Per Møller, Line Holler Mielby, Ditte Hartvig) at the Department of Food Science at Copenhagen University have been involved. In addition gastronomic entrepeneur Claus Meyer (noma co-founder) and physics professor Peter Barham (Bristol University) have contributed, as well as the chefs Thorsten Vildgaard (noma/Nordic Food Lab) and Bo Frederiksen (Meyers Madhus). Any of the names sound familiar? They should if you’ve read the recent review published in Chemical Reviews: Molecular Gastronomy: A New Emerging Scientific Discipline where several of the people involved in the project contributed as authors. This landmark paper summarizes and lays out research opportunities in molecular gastronomy, the branch of food science that deals with The art and science of choosing, preparing and eating good food to quote Thorvald Pedersens definition – he is a professor emeritus in chemistry that played an important role helping to establish molecular gastronomy as a research field at the University of Copenhagen.

To mark the end of the project a seminar was organized on March 2nd 2011. The program included the following presentations:
(more…)