When I blogged about DIY mineral water last year it was mainly a theoretical exercise since I didn’t have the required salts at hand. My experience was limited to adding some baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to water before carbonation. Luckily Paul Hinrichs tested the calculator! In the meantime I have purchased the required salts and with several kilograms in total I’m probably well stocked for the next decade! Based on the output from the calculator, I mixed the salts required to clone San Pellegrino, added water and carbonated the mixture. And the good news is that it works! The water tastes great and I’ve been enjoying cloned mineral waters every day now for the last couple of weeks.

Some changes have been made to the mineral water calculator (Updated! – scroll down for download options) since I last posted:

• a simpler worksheet more suitable for printing has been added
• more mineral waters have been added to the database, covering TDS (total dissolved solids) levels all the way up to more than 4000 mg/L
• potassium bicarbonate, magnesium chloride and calcium nitrate are made optional and can be left out if desired (it’s still a little unclear to me to what extent these can be detected at the typical levels found in mineral waters)
• one can now chose between using either hydroxides or carbonates of calcium and magnesium, depending on availability (it should be noted however that some waters high in bicarbonate may require the use of the hydroxides – not quite sure about this though)

A spoon full of mineral salts is required for the preparation of 1 liter of San Pellegrino mineral water.

Instructions for how to prepare the mixture of salts
Start by chosing the mineral water you want to clone from the drop down list. My advice would be not to start with the waters having very high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) (except Kessel and Vichy Saint-Yorre since sodium bicarbonate dissolves easily). Aim for a TDS in the range 200-1500 mg/L (the list of all mineral waters in the rightmost worksheet is viewable and sortable). At the lower end you may not detect much mineral taste at all. At the higher end the mineral taste becomes quite pronounced. You can click the check boxes to include/exclude some salts. If known enter the composition of your tap water (your local water company should be able to give you these figures). I suggest that you weigh out the salts for 10 or even 100 liters, otherwise the amounts of salts will be in the low milligram or microgram range, requiring expensive lab scales. Mix the salts well. It may be god to start by mixing the salts present in the lowest concentrations first to ensure a homogeneous mixture.

How to make a cloned mineral water
Weigh out the approximate amount of salt (prepared as described above) needed for the amount of water that your carbonation vessel holds. At this point it’s doesn’t need to be very accurate, so if you have weighed it once you can simply need to remember which spoon you used and the size of the heap. Note that the different mineral salts vary greatly in density, so you should calibrate the heap used for each mineral salt mixture. Add the salt to the carbonation vessel and fill it up to the mark with water. The water will now turn opaque and whitish as the salts are suspended in the water (see picture above). Carbonate carefully and, depending on whether the water is high in carbonation and/or bicarbonate, try to hold the carbonation pressure for a couple of seconds extra before letting the pressure out. This allows a little more carbon dioxide to dissolve. Screw on the cap immediately to prevent the carbon dioxide from escaping. In some cases it may be necessary to repeat the carbonation step after some hours. Once the salts have dissolved (i.e. the water becomes clear) you can enjoy your very own home-made mineral water!

Several of the mineral salts have are not soluble in tap water, hence the opaque look to the left. After carbonation however they dissolve rapidly.

So far I’ve made up the salt mixtures for San Pellegrino (total dissolved solids, TDS: 1109 mg/L) and Gerolsteiner (TDS: 2488 mg/L). The first works like a charm, even when all salts are added simultaneously. This is possibly due to the high amount of sulfates which seem to dissolve more easily. Gerolsteiner is more tricky, partly due to the high TDS and the low amount of sulfate. I made it using carbonates instead of hydroxides, hoping that this would require addition of less carbon dioxide to neutralize the base. But after two days and 2-3 extra additions of carbon dioxide the salts had still not dissolved completely and this puzzles me. I certainly need to repeat this experiment. Darcy O’Neil states in Fix the pumps that the order of addition does matter. I’m not quite sure if that really is the case as most of the salts have a very low water solubility to start with, and the carbonic acid is the reason they dissolve. But maybe there is something I’m overlooking here? It could be that Gerolsteiner is easier to do with hydroxides, but Paul Hinrichs also had some trouble getting all the salts to dissolve for Gerolsteiner.

Some of the salts may be tricky to obtain, but the synonyms and links to Amazon below may be of some help:

• CaSO₄·0.5H₂O = Plaster of Paris (check availability from Amazon)
• MgSO₄·7H₂O = Epsom salt (check availability from Amazon)
• CaCO₃ = Chalk (check availability from Amazon)
• NaHCO₃ = Baking soda
• NaCl = Table salt
• Mg(OH)₂ = Milk of magnesia (check availability from Amazon)
• Ca(OH)₂ = Slaked lime, pickling lime, CAL (check availability from Amazon)

Before you head of to Amazon or some other place to order salts I should probably add some words of warning: make sure that the source you find is suitable for consumption! Some technical qualities of mineral salts may not be intended for food use, for instance due to the presence of heavy metals or other contaminants.

Note that some of the salts are available with varying amounts of crystal water. If you use other salts than those specified (i.e. anhydrous salts or salts with more crystal water) the molecular weights in the spreadsheet need to be adjusted for this. I guess that if you are familiar with the concept of crystal water, you’ll easily figure out the correct molecular weight and how to update the calculator according to the specific salts you chose to use.

Screen shot of the simple version, best suited for printing (see below for download options):

Screen shot of the complete version (see below for download options):

Calculator download options
Version 5 (latest update)
Excel: mineral_water_calculator_v5.xlsx (44 kB)
Open office: mineral_water_calculator_v5.ods (44 kB)

Version 4 (the version originally provided with this blog post – contains errors)
mineral_water_calculator_v4.xlsx

Mineral waters included
Mineral waters included in the database that comes with the calculator: Acqua Panna, Antipodes, Apollinaris, Aquarel Birken, Artificial mineral water, Badoit, Borsec, Burton (beer brewing), Calistoga, Carola Rouge, Contrex, Dorna, Evian, Farris, Fiuggi, Gerolsteiner, Harghita, Hassia Sprudel, Henniez, Kessel, London (beer brewing), Mountain Valley Spring, Munich (beer brewing), Neuselters, Perrier, Pilsen (beer brewing), PurPur (coffee brewing), Rosbacher Klassich, Saint-Yorre, Salvus, San Benedetto, San Narciso, San Pellegrino, Selters, Tea brewing (max), Tea brewing (min), Tesanjski Dijamant, Ty Nant, Vittel, Volvic, Voss, Waiwera. And you can easily add data for other mineral waters. The websites mineralwaters.org, finewaters.com and Mineral water atlas of the world have data for several hundred waters available. And if you have a bottle of your favourite mineral water at hand you only need to check the label to find the required input for the calculator.

My fellow bloggers Anu Hopia (Molekyyligastronomia) and Erik Fooladi (Fooducation) together with Jenni Vartiainen and Maija Aksela have embarked on a collaboration project to explore claims about food and cooking. If you are a researcher (from any field), teacher at any level, chef or simply a foodie who finds this interesting you can find info at the end of this email on how to contact them. I bring here their description of the project in extenso:

Interdisciplinary network of culinary claims
Is it true that you mustn’t rinse, but rather brush, mushrooms? Should a steak be seared to keep the juices inside? Can you prevent fruit salad from turning brown by sprinkling it with lemon juice? Such apparently mundane questions have been source of inspiration for food geeks at least since “The Curious cook” by Harold McGee (1990) was published, but most likely much earlier. A closer analysis of such questions reveal an abundance of intriguing, surprisingly complex and unexplored questions which might be vehicles for education and even subject for research within natural and social sciences.

The world of food and cooking is full of statements on how to do things and occasionally why one should adhere to these advices. Many are rooted in tradition or are created today by us all and sometimes appear to us like modern urban stories. Some are rooted in long experience of kitchen professionals or home cooks, and some even in science. When tradition and science meet interesting things might happen. In some cases the phenomenon in question (see examples in the introduction) is well described within one field of science but is less so in another discipline, laying questions open for research. Secondly, such culinary claims, which we have termed “Kitchen stories”, provide valuable opportunities in education at various levels (see below). Thirdly, interesting questions might be revealed by laypeople, craftsmen (chefs, artisans) or even school children which in turn could end up as relevant research topics to be studied within various sciences. Finally, such kitchen stories are valuable parts of our cultural heritage and provide rich research material for scientific fields such as cultural history and sociology (see figure above).

Ongoing efforts
Thus far, we have seen several efforts toward the study of such culinary claims within food science (molecular gastronomy, MG) and since publication of Curious Cook several publications do mention such claims as part of the programme of molecular gastronomy (This, 2009; Vega & Ubbink, 2008). [1] Examples of scientific studies on culinary claims are research on beef stock cooking from the University of Copenhagen (Snitkjær et al., 2010; Snitkjær et al., 2011) and INRA Paris (This et al., 2004). Another example is whether it is a good idea (for the flavour of the dish) to separate the peel and seeds from the flesh before using tomatoes (Oruna-Concha et al., 2007). Even though some such claims have been studied within MG/food science we are not aware of studies starting from such claims within other disciplines such as ethnology, food history, sociology etc. [2] Following up one of the examples above, one might thus ask

• What claims about making beef stock do we find around the world?
• Are the various versions of one claim similar or qualitatively different?
• Do they exist in some countries/areas, being absent in others? How are they distributed geographically and in time?
• etc.

Since producing, cooking and eating/enjoying food is among the most influential phenomena throughout human history such claims should be relevant and important questions to research. Furthermore, a large proportion of such knowledge is rooted in tradition and we are thus in a hurry to collect/record it because much of it lies in the hands and minds of people only. We should not trust that our modern, globalised and urbanised society will hand down this knowledge to the coming generations in like manner as done in past times. Also, examples exist of the potential in using such claims in various levels of education. In France efforts have been carried out in schools, such as “Ateliers expérimentaux du gout” and “Programme “Dictons et plats patrimoniaux””. [3] Also we are underway, through educational research in Finland (Västinsalo & Aksela, 2011) and Norway (Fooladi, 2010), to unveil what potential this might have in science and home economics education. A collection of possible research topics/questions is given in the appendix (link to Fooducation). Our opinion is that this should be a dynamic and expanding list, adding new questions and perspectives along the way.

Prospects and invitation
We believe that this project might involve, perhaps even integrate, a manifold of disciplines as well as various research methodologies/paradigms. As shown in the figure, the phenomenon “culinary claims” forms the centrepiece, allowing the various disciplines to maintain their distinctive features, but also to let them meet in a common point of interest. Our goal is to build an international collection of kitchen stories and culinary claims to be developed and benefitted by researchers of different fields (a French collection exists [4]). We would also like to build a network for researchers, teachers, schools, practitioners and others with a common interest in this topic. Currently no funds are available, but several national applications are in. If you are interested in joining this network, let us know. At this point, we have not set any limits to who might join in, regardless of profession. Further, if you are aware of similar type of efforts, we’d be happy to learn about them.

Contact (in alphabetical order)
Anu Hopia, University of Turku, Functional Foods Forum. Professor (food development). E-mail: anu.hopia (a t) utu.fi. Web page (in Finnish): http://molekyyligastronomia.fi

Erik Fooladi, Volda University College, Norway. Associate professor (chemistry, home economics, teacher education). E-mail: ef (a t) hivolda.no. Web page: http://fooducation.org

Jenni Vartiainen, Helsinki University, Finland. Coordinator of Finland’s science education centre LUMA, PhD student. E-mail: jenni.vastinsalo (a t) helsinki.fi. Web page: www.helsinki.fi/luma/english

Dr Maija Aksela (professor), head of Finland’s Science Education Centre and the Unit of Chemistry Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. E-mail: maija.aksela (a t) helsinki.fi

Notes
[1] Some collections are available on the web, e.g. http://kitchen-myths.com and they appear to be tool to raise interest of public to natural sciences. However, many such efforts often have a rather one-sided perspective in which science carries “the truth” which is used to “debunk the fallacies of tradition”. We believe in a meeting ground for both science and tradition where both can contribute to the other on more equal terms.
[2] We do not, however, claim that such research does not exist, and would be delighted to see such research.
[3] We are not aware of whether these efforts have been followed by educational research.
[4] www.inra.fr/la_science_et_vous/apprendre_experimenter/gastronomie_moleculaire/une_banque_de_precisions_culinaires

References
Fooladi, E. (2010). “Kitchen stories” – Assertions about food and cooking as a framework for teaching argumentation. Paper presented at the XIV IOSTE Symposium, Bled, Slovenia. http://www.ioste14.org/publications/

McGee, H. (1990). The Curious Cook – Taking the lid off kitchen facts and fallacies. San Francisco: North Point Press.

Oruna-Concha, M. J., Methven, L., Blumenthal, H., Young, C., & Mottram, D. S. (2007). Differences in Glutamic Acid and 5′-ribonucleotide Contents Between Flesh and Pulp of Tomatoes and the Relationship with Umami Taste. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 55(14), 5776-5780. doi: 10.1021/jf070791p

Snitkjær, P., Frøst, M. B., Skibsted, L. H., & Risbo, J. (2010). Flavour development during beef stock reduction. Food Chemistry, 122(3), 645-655. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2010.03.025

Snitkjær, P., Risbo, J., Skibsted, L. H., Ebeler, S., Heymann, H., Harmon, K., & Frøst, M. B. (2011). Beef stock reduction with red wine – Effects of preparation method and wine characteristics. Food Chemistry, 126(1), 183-196. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2010.10.096

This, H. (2009). Molecular Gastronomy, a Scientific Look at Cooking. Accounts of Chemical Research, 42(5), 575-583. doi: 10.1021/ar8002078

This, H., Meric, R., & Cazor, A. (2004). Lavoisier and Meat Stock. Comptes Rendus Chimie, 9, 1510-1515. doi: 10.1016/j.crci.2006.07.002

Vega, C., & Ubbink, J. (2008). Molecular Gastronomy: A Food Fad or Science Supporting Innovative Cuisine? Trends in Food Science & Technology, 19(7), 372-382. doi: 10.1016/j.tifs.2008.01.006

Västinsalo, J., & Aksela, M. (2011). Using kitchen stories as starting point for chemical education in high school. Paper presented at the ESERA 2011, Lyon, France. http://www.esera2011.fr/en/scientific-programme.html

A couple of books have caught my eye during the year and have naturally made their way into my Christmas wish list (and some I’ve already ordered myself). Please let me know if there are books you belive should be on this list that I have missed.

Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking
by Simon Quellen Field
288 pages

The back cover states “When you’re cooking, you’re a chemist!”. I couldn’t agree more and figured this was a book for me. I already have my copy in front of me and see there are many interesting observations and experiments described.

Heston Blumenthal at Home
by Heston Blumenthal
408 pages

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria
by Ferran Adrià
384 pages

Ferran and Heston have jumped onto the cooking-at-home-with-great-chefs waggon. They’d be more than welcome to come and cook in my kitchen, but until that happens I’ll let their books inspire me. An important thing about these books is that, given their close collaboration with scientists, I have a high expectation that the advice given in all recipes should be scientifically sound (which of course is not the case for many other cook books).

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters
by Gordon M. Shepherd
288 pages

I stumbled across this one by chance. It looks like a “must have” too me, and my copy is already on its way. In an interview with Salon, the author Gordon M. Shepherd, a professor of neurobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, says that:
“I began to realize that increasingly smell was for sensing the flavor of food. It goes almost unrecognized as we eat our food because we think it all comes from taste in our mouths. The more research that I did on flavor, the more I realized that the sense of smell was the dominant sense in flavor — and that we are almost totally unaware of it.”

The Oxford Companion to Beer
edited by Garrett Oliver
960 pages

Having ventured into brewing I found this book quite irresistable!

The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking
edited by Cesar Vega, Job Ubbink and Erik van der Linden
336 pages

I’ve mentioned this book previously. With 35 essays covering a range of topics this should be of interest to many Khymos readers!

Apart from these books we just have to face it: there’s no way around Modernist cuisine. If you don’t own a copy yet I’m quite sure it still sits there on the top of your wish list. And – if you happen to read Swedish – I would highly recommend the recently published book Matmolekyler (“Food molecules”) by Malin Sandström and Lisa Förare Winbladh (also check out their blog blog with the same name – also in Swedish).

Flavor pairing is a controversial* topic which I’ve blogged about many times in the past. In my last post I suggested that predicted aroma similarity may be a more precise term, and below is an attempt to illustrate predicted aroma similarity (of type 2d according to this classification) by using a color analogy. Let me explain a little first: The letters describe different foods and colors are used to illustrate the sum of the key odorants. The normal situation is that foods A and K (which are perceived as different because they are far apart in the alphabet) also have different colors meaning that they share few or no key odorants. A and B however are close in the alphabet and have similar colors, hence they share key odorants. In some cases foods that we think are very different (A and Z) may turn out to share several key odorants (i.e. have similar colors). The “flavor pairing hypothesis” is a way of finding the “Z” based on predict aroma similarity. I think one reason why we cannot always find the “Z” is that our sense of smell is not very analytical (compared to a gas chromatograph). One thing which I hope becomes clearer with the color analogy is that for a successful pairing one will need contrasting elements as well. This was also a general experience from the TGRWT experiments. I’m very curious whether this communicates well or just makes things even more confusing, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Let us assume that the two foods A and K with no key odorants in common taste marvelous together. Many (or possibly even most?) food pairings are of this kind.

Two similar foods A and C share a number of key odorants. This is no big surprise and most people will say that A and C are quite similar.

Aroma similarity prediction (the “flavor pairing hypothesis”) is a tool to identify Z which (surprisingly) turns out to be quite similar to A because they share key odorants. As mentioned above, finding Z is what is difficult.

Let us imagine a dish where A is a prominent ingredient. It’s combined with classic or empirical pairings (indicated with the different colors – the color tones are chose to match each other).

Based on aroma similarity prediction one can then introduce Z which (surprisingly) is similar to A because of overlapping key odorants.

One can even imagine the case where A is replaced by Z. If the process is repeated a dish can slowly morph into a new dish by exchanging one ingredient at a time.

*Controversial: See for instance the latest issue of Gastronomica where Maurits de Klepper criticizes flavor pairing under the title “Food Pairing Theory – A European Food Fad”. It’s an interesting piece and I recommend that you buy access to read it. But I should quickly add that there are a couple of things that I disagree with. What I’ve previously formulated as a flavor pairing hypothesis is turned into a theory, and I also disagree with the formulation that “the more aromatic compounds two foods have in common, the better they taste together”. In my previous blog post on the topic I have reformulated my viewpoint as follows: For foods with a predicted aroma similarity based on the analysis of it’s volatiles there is a good chance that they can be used together in a dish. It’s also a pity that de Klepper doesn’t cover the topic of key odorants (or odor activity values) properly, but mixes up the different categories (2a, 2b, 2c and 2d) of aroma similarity prediction that I’ve outlined previously. Despite this de Klepper summarizes the experiences from TGRWT very well when he says that flavor pairing “is not a guaranteed recipe for success – balancing flavors is what does the trick”. I couldn’t agree more.

The very first blog post on Khymos appeared on August 27th, 2006. That’s 5 years ago today – and to celebrate this the following post will be about Khymos and blogging. It’s going to be quite introvert, but hopefully you’ll appreciate the look behind the scenes! I 2006 had no clue that I would still be going on for so long. Five words that sum up the 5 years of blogging are: fun, readers, research, experiments and photography. Let me explain:

FUN: Blogging has been great fun, and I would never have continued for so long if I hadn’t enjoyed it. I’ve had a couple of long breaks, and my posting frequency varies, but that’s because of a rule I’ve put up for my blogging: No deadlines! This is to make sure the blog is driven by ethusiasm. My philosophy is that if I enjoy writing, I hope you will enjoy reading!

READERS: First and foremost blogging is fun because of you! Without readers, I wouldn’t have kept on blogging. All the feedback, comments, discussions and emails are very much appreciated, not to mention all the interesting questions and observations you send me. My only regret here is that there are questions I received months (and even more than a year ago) which I haven’t answered yet… Easy questions are often answered as quickly as possible, whereas the more difficult ones may take a little longer. But if you haven’t heard back from me in let’s say 1-2 weeks – please send a new email!

RESEARCH: Another reason it has been great fun is the opportunity it gives me to research subjects and do experiments in a more structured way. I actually learn a lot about food and chemistry while blogging. Once I’ve blogged about a topic it’s very easy to include it in presentations/lectures I give on molecular gastronomy and popular food science.

EXPERIMENTS: I really enjoy researching a subject, especially when I manage to figure out of something. In fact, few things are more rewarding than solving a problem or gaining new insight. But the great thing about chemistry is that you can do experiments as well. And with food chemistry you’re even allowed to taste!

PHOTOGRAPHY: When popularising science, and chemistry in particular, I find that illustrations and pictures are essential. As it happens I also enjoy taking pictures, so the blog lets me do a lot of things that I enjoy at the same time!

How I got started
When I first became interested in the connection between food and chemistry in the late 90′s, I searched the Internet without finding much information. I did however find some very interesting books in the faculty library, including Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking – The Science and Lore of the Kitchen”. Having found books about the subject, I soon started to give popular science presentations. In 2004 I was invited to attend the “International Workshop on Molecular Gastronomy” in Erice, Sicily. This was a great experience and I enjoyed meeting many of the scientists, writers and chefs involved with molcular gastronomy. When I first put up a webpage in 2002 the main purpose was to maintain a more or less comprehensive listing of books and websites with relevance to molecular gastronomy. I published it mainly as a bibliography related to my popular science lectures. After I left the University of Oslo, the page was moved to it’s present location at khymos.org. Needless to say, I’m no longer able to keep track of all the interesting things happening related to science enabled cooking, given the increasing popularity as well as the many chefs, restaurants, books, websites and interviews appearing. Therefore I’m very thankful when readers contact me about things they think I should blog about.

What do I blog about?
My blog posts mostly fall into one of the following categories:

• Announcements and recommendations of books, blogs, events, new websites etc. It’s often difficult to draw a line here, but my guiding principle here is that if I find it interesting, I hope you will as well. And of course, feel free to share news, tips and announcements with me using the contact form.
• Feature posts on a researched topic which almost always involve some cooking and experimentation, often requiring a litterature search as well. These are time consuming posts to write, but also very rewarding for myself. I wish I had more time for these!
• Travel reports such as those from EuroFoodChem, The Flemish Primitives and the MG seminars in Copenhagen allow me to practice as a journalist.
• The food blogging event They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT) allowed me as well as all the participants to explore food pairings based on shared impact odorants.
• The occasional interview satisfies my thirst for learning more from knowledgeable people I admire. I should do more interviews!
• Book reviews is something I’ve only just begun doing. Time consuming, but also rewarding.

A category which I haven’t dug properly into yet is recipes for conventional food accompanied by scientific explanations. This has been pioneered by Hervé This in Révélations gastronomiques (available in German but not in English), and I love the format that answers all the whys right there in the middle of the recipe. I hope I will find time for such blog posts in the future!

The current blog
After a complete makeover of the blog in January 2009 I decided to move the static content from the old Khymos site to the blog. Some changes have been made, so for those of you who regularily read Khymos feed through an RSS reader or a news aggregator, I suggest that you visit the website to check out what the complete site looks like now.

Since the facelift in January 2009 there are a couple of notable changes to help you navigate around the site. These include a tag cloud, a list of popular posts and a list of the last comments (all shown in the picture below). There is also a search field providing a full text search of the entire contents of Khymos. One of the technical advantages of a blog over a conventional website is of course the RSS funtion which allows posts to be aggregated and served to readers in their favorite RSS reader. If you’re not familiar with this, try pressing the large orange icon in the upper right corner and see what happens! Most web browser today include a basic RSS reader. For those who prefer email there is also a possibility to subscribe to blog posts via email.

If you only read the RSS you miss a number of features available on the webiste.

Most popular posts and pages
The most viewed posts and pages from April 2008 – August 2011 are (total number of views in this time period):

Top 15 blog posts
Towards the perfect soft boiled egg (90,185)
Perfect steak with DIY “sous vide” cooking (43,986)
First experiments with sodium alginate (34,698)
A mathematician cooks sous vide (19,156)
Edible cocktails with gelatin (18,304)
A pinch of salt for your coffee, Sir? (15,299)
Hydrocolloid recipe collection (13,184)
Speeding up the Maillard reaction (12,233)
No-knead bread (9,227)
TGRWT #10: Pizza with blue cheese and pineapple (8,994)
TGIF: Fed up with foam? (8,805)
TGIF: Periodic tables of food (8,180)
Glutamic acid in tomatoes and parmesan (7,696)
Ice cubes and air bubbles (7,477)
Coffee espuma with garlic and chocolate (TGRWT #1) (7,336)

Top 10 pages
Recipe collection (120,066)
TGRWT (25,916)
Flavor pairing (20,389)
Molecular gastronomy (15,949)
Suppliers (13,476)
About Khymos (13,041)
Articles (12,080)
People (7,862)
Videos (7,084)
Reference & technique (6,010)

Blog posts I enjoyed writing
Looking at the list above suggests that my philosophy about you enjoying reading what I enjoy writing doesn’t always hold true. Some of the posts that I really enjoyed researching and writing do not show up on the lists above. Here’s my secret insiders guide to the best hidden posts of Khymos that do not show up in the lists above:

The series on Ten tips for practical molecular gastronomy
The serices on Wonders of extraction: water, oil, ethanol, espresso, pressure
Nocino walnut liqueur part I and part II
The follow up posts on egg yolks: Perfect egg yolks, Perfect egg yolks part 2
Norwegian egg coffee
DIY mineral water (including an Excel spreadsheet)
Soda fountain science explained
Interview with Chris Young (co-author of Modernist Cuisine!)

Some statistics
So far I’ve written 270 blog posts, including the one you are reading now. The blog posts are grouped in 24 categories and have been tagged with 1033 different tags. Comments are moderated, the major reason for this being spam. The Akismet spam killer has so far caught ~445,000 spam comments since I turned it on. Compare that with the 2207 comments that have been approved and I think you see why comment moderation is necessary (although a side effect is that legitimate comments are being held back for approval, thereby delaying the discussion in the comment threads).

A grand total of 2.9 terabytes have been served during these 5 years according to the logs of the company hosting Khymos. This amount of traffic is the result from 8.5 million visits resulting in 78 million hits, requesting 61 million files and 30 million pages in total. But one can only wonder what kind of traffic numbers all the spam comments generate… More numbers from the logs can be found in the table below.

Webmetrics is tricky, and simply counting hits or views may not tell the whole truth. One company which specialises in web metrics is Quantcast. Their monthly visitor count for Khymos is shown below:

More detailed data is available directly on Quantcast’s page about Khymos.

The number of RSS subscribers in Google Reader has been growing steadily and a couple of weeks ago it was around 3500. But then something happened – I don’t know what – and the number is now approaching 40000. The strange thing however is that this increase in subscribers is not reflected in the other statistics, so it’s hard to really tell whether it’s a realistic number or not.

Blogging software
I can still remember how I started reading about different blogging platforms available in 2006. I ended up chosing WordPress which at that time had reached v.2. Today I’m so happy that I chose WordPress! I’m amazed by the development team and what they have achieved, and at this point I should really forward a big thank you to the team behind WordPress. During these five years the software has really matured and it’s a great tool for any blogger – hereby highly recommended (and did I mention that it’s free?).

More about photography
Some of the very first pictures on the blog were shot with a Canon Powershot A400, a simple point & shoot camera that left a lot to be desired in handling. With enough light however the camera takes decent pictures, and the 3MP sensor serves as a good reminder that when having pictures printed in the typical 10 x 13/15 cm size you really don’t need more pixels. In 2007 it was time to upgrade to a Ricoh GX100 – I got this camera after long considerations, and what appealed to me was the combination of a real wide angle zoom (equivalent to 24-70 mm) and full manual controls. The downside is perhaps that the camera is a bit slow, and the low light capabilities are also limited. And then in 2010 I finally stepped up and got myself a DSLR. I considered both D90 and D700 from Nikon, as well as the 7D and 5D mark II from Canon, but in the end I landed at Nikon D300s. The controls and handling are excellent, and the camera is fast – it actually takes the picture when you press the button, not a second or so later as is the case with many P&S cameras. In combination with the my prime lenses Nikkor 35 mm 1:2 and 20 mm 1:2.8 (which I bougt used) I’m well off in most low light situations. Both have excellent close ranges, and with the narrow depth of field they are excellent companions for food photography. And if needed I could always use the macro function on GX100 if needed.

A book I’ve been looking forward to for a long time is The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking. It is now available for pre-order with expected delivery on January 31st, 2012. Work on the book began back in 2008, and that year coincidentally marked the 20th anniversary of But the crackling is superb, a refreshing anthology on the science of cooking and eating edited by Nicholas and Giana Kurti. The editors of The Kitchen as Laboratory, Cesar Vega Morales, Job Ubbink and Erik van van der Linden, wanted to continue in the spirit of this book. Through 35 essays the invited chefs, scientists and cooks explore topics of their choice, often based on experiments in their own kitchen. This includes a contribution by me on the Maillard reaction and how we – often without thinking about it – increase it’s rate in different ways when cooking. As for the other contributions, based on the preliminary lists all I can say is that I look forward to read the book!

The book Cooking science – Condensed matter by Adria Vicenc came out last year, but only recently did it appear on my radar. This 75 page preview suggests that it is part coffee table book and part documentation of modern Catalan cuisine combined with short essays on various topics such as food preservation and synaesthetic cooking. Add to that a dash of technology and large photos and descriptions of a sous vide water bath, a rotary evaporator, a freeze drier etc. It’s kind of like a light version of Modernist Cuisine. In his introduction Ferran Adria states that: “As has happened throughout history in the majority of the stages of human evolution, the new technologies act as a support for the progress of cookery”. This is technology with a purpose: better food!

More information in Catalan, Spanish and English is available from the Materia Condensa website. The book features QR codes which lead to various digital resources (also available directly from the website).

The book features a periodic table of preserves (full resolution view available through this preview) which I’ve now added to my list of other food related periodic tables. Fun? Yes! Useful? Probably not…

Readers well aquianted with the food blogosphere will likely be familiar with Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot’s blog Ideas in food. Since December 2004 they have generously shared pictures, ideas, insights and inspirations online. As chefs they have eagerly integrated modernist techniques and elements in their cooking, allowing technology to improve their cooking whenever possible. No wonder I’ve been a long time follower of their blog! And needless to say I was also exicted to receive a review copy of their recent book Ideas in food: Great recipes and why they work.

First and foremost the book is a great collection of ideas explored by the authors. The ideas are exemplified through recipes (about 100 in total) which showcase the creativity of the authors, from the simple vanilla salt to innovative pasta and risotto techniques, red cabbage kimchi with a built in pH indicator, grilled potato ice cream and practical examples of how hydrocolloids can be utilized. It is certainly an engaging book, and my copy is filled with countless comments, “Try this!”, “Interesting!” and enthusiastic exlamations, but also question marks and disagreement. For some reason the book has been divied into Ideas for everyone and Ideas for professionals, the latter dealing mainly with hydrocolloids. But why the discussion of starch and gelation is reserved for the professionals whereas the recipe for homemade mozarella which calls for lipase, citric acid and rennet is placed in the “for everyone” section, eludes me.

I suggest you have a pencil ready when reading the book!

As the title suggests there are not only ideas and recipes, but also exlanations that sometimes dig deep into food science. The real strength of the book are the cases where a deeper understanding of the underlying science leads to new ideas. Having explored potatoes and hydration of starch, a simple yet brilliant idea which comes out of this is the parcooked rice (65 °C for 30 min) which subsequentially allows for a superfast risotto. As elegant is the hydration of dried pasta by soaking in cold water. Once hydrated, the pasta is drained and kept in a closed container/bag in the fridge. When dropped into boiling water the pasta will cook as fast as fresh pasta. Combining this with other ideas led to a mac’n cheese made from roasted pasta that is smoked and then hydrated in milk, reserving the excess milk with the surface starch for later stage to help thicken the sauce.

Pasta hydrates in cold water (1:4 ratio of pasta to water) within a couple of hours. The fully hydrated pasta cooks within a couple of minutes.

Explaining the science of food and cooking in lay terms is difficult, especially when striving for simple and correct explanations. On some occasions the authors strike a good balance here, but at times the explanations are either too simplistic or too detailed to be of any real help. I was often left with a feeling that the text desperately called for illustrations for the reader to properly grasp the concepts, for instance in their discussion of amylopectin, amylose and starch granules. Perhaps it’s because I’m used to science text books, but the fact that Ideas in food doesn’t have a single figure, diagram or photo is a drawback in my opnion.

Understanding how amylose and amylpection would be easier had they included a simple drawing like this one.

Ever since reading Hervé This’ book Révélations gastronomiques (available in German as Kulinarische Geheimnisse, not available in English) I have appreciated the approach that combines recipes with answers to the many whys that pop up in my mind. Comparing Ideas in food: Great recipes and why they work with This’ book, what shines through at places is the author’s lack of scientific training. Without doubt they know much more food science than the average chef, but it is surprising for instance that the Maillard reaction is not mentioned in their discussion of stocks. And the precision of the recipes is often questionable, especially regarding their use of metric units in the first section. Saying that 1/2 cup of milk equals 130 grams makes sense to me because I expect to see a rounded number. But an online conversion calculator I often use says that for milk 0.5 US cups = 121.8 g = 118.3 ml, so I would naturally have rounded this to 120 grams. On the other hand, when the authors state that 8 3/4 cups of water equals 1968.75 grams the precision implied by the number of digits will make for a good laugh for scientists reading this. And I’m puzzled by how the “cups” used apparantly range from 225 to 260 mL – is there something I’m missing here?. The ultimate solution to this of course would be to eliminate the United States customary units alltogether (sorry all Americans!). Ironically this is exactly what the authors did in the “Ideas for professionals” section.

In the light of the recent paper on the 6X °C egg the whole chapter on “perfect” eggs seems a little outdated. The recipes are probably fine (I haven’t tested them), but I was surprised to read that egg whites coagulate from 60-65.5 °C (this must be a typo) whereas egg yolks coagulate from 65-70 °C (true, but they start to coagulate at a lower temperature, and it’s a function of time and temperature).

To conclude, the compilation of great food ideas is what I found most rewarding in the book. And despite the shortcomings mentioned above I would wholeheartedly recommend the book, simply because of all the nice examples of how a new technique or theoretical insight can be extrapolated into related areas and lead to new ideas in the kitchen. I suggest that you get Ideas in food: Great recipes and why they work for it’s collection of ideas and the creativity of the chefs. But if you’re interested in the whys of cooking you will be better served by other books, the obvious choices being On food and cooking and Keys to good cooking by Harold McGee or The science of cooking by Peter Barham.

Ideas in food – Great recipes and why they work
Aki Kamozawa and Alexander Talbot
320 p, no illustrations/photos
2010, Clarkson Potter
ISBN 978-0-307-71740-5

Very sturdy box-in-box packaging with special deformation elements lining the inner box. You’ve probably guessed it by now…

My copy of Modernist Cuisine has arrived!

If you’re a scientist and like to cook these books are a must! Actually… if you’re serious about cooking I’d say you have no choice!

A first observation is that I need to have a notebook nearby when sitting down with the books. Leafing through the volumes there are so many things I want to try and ideas start popping up. And with >2400 pages it may take some time before I accidentally return to the exact same page

The lecture schedule for the 2011 fall semester is as follows (exact dates and locations here):

1. Historical Context and Demos Illustrating the Relationship of Food and Science. Speakers: Dave Arnold (Food Arts magazine’s Contributing Editor for Equipment & Food Science), Harold McGee (author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen and columnist for The New York Times) and David Weitz (Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard)
2. Sous-vide Cooking: Phases of Matter. Speaker: Joan Roca (El Celler de Can Roca).
3. Heat and Temperature Flux in Chocolate. Speaker: Ramon Morató (Aula Chocovic)
4. Viscosity and Thickeners. Speaker: Carles Tejedor (Via Veneto), Fina Puigdevall and Pere Planagumà (les Coles)
5. Food Texture and Mouth Feel. Speaker: Grant Achatz (Alinea)
6. Gelation. Speaker: José Andrés (ThinkFoodGroup, minibar, Jaleo).
7. Emulsions: Traditional and New Emulsions. Speaker: Nandu Jubany (Can Jubany) and Carles Gaig (Fonda Gaig).
8. Proteins & Enzymes: Transglutaminase. Speaker: Wylie Dufresne (wd~50).
9. Browning Reactions: Culinary Examples. Speaker: Carme Ruscalleda (Sant Pau, Sant Pau de Tòquio).
10. Molecular Differences Between Production Methods. Speaker: Dan Barber (Blue Hill).
11. (Title to Come) Speaker: David Chang (momofuku)
12. Heat Transfer. Speaker: Nathan Myhrvold (former Microsoft CTO; co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures; and author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking)
13. Dessert. Speaker: Bill Yosses (White House)
14. Technology and Cooking. Speaker: Ferran Adrià (elBulli)

Below is the 2010 schedule for comparison. Remember that all of these are available on Youtube and iTunes!

1. Science and Cooking: A Dialogue. Speakers: Harold McGee, Ferran Adria (elBulli), José Andrés (minibar by josé andrés, Jaleo, The Bazaar) with commentary/moderation from Professors David Weitz and Michael Brenner (Harvard).
2. Sous-vide Cooking: a State of Matter. Speaker: Joan Roca (El Celler de Can Roca).
3. Brain Candy: How Desserts Slow the Passage of Time. Speaker: Bill Yosses (White House Pastry Chef).
4. Olive Oil & Viscosity. Speaker: Carles Tejedor (Via Veneto).
5. Heat, Temperature, & Chocolate. Speaker: Enric Rovira.
6. Reinventing Food Texture & Flavor. Speaker: Grant Achatz (Alinea).
7. Emulsions: Concept of Stabilizing Oil &Water. Speaker: Nandu Jubany (Can Jubany).
8. Gelation. José Andrés (ThinkFoodGroup, minibar, Jaleo).
9. Browning & Oxidations. Carme Ruscalleda (Sant Pau, Sant Pau de Tòquio).
10. Meat Glue Mania. Wylie Dufresne (wd~50).
11. Cultivating Flavor: A Recipe for the Recipe. Dan Barber (Blue Hill).
12. Creative Ceilings: How We Use Errors, Failure and Physical Limitations as Catalysts for Culinary Innovation. David Chang (momofuku).