The Canadian sommerlier François Chartier (he has an extensive website featuring several blogs, including a section named Sommellerie moléculaire) is out with a new book on food and wine pairing. It’s not just another (superfluous) book on the subject. As the title Papilles et molécules (= Tastebuds and Molecules, unfortunately not available in English) suggests there is some science involved. It turns out in fact that he has applied the principles of flavor pairing to food and wine. With help from Richard Béliveau from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Martin Loignon from PerkinElmer he has analyzed wines and food and comes up with the following suggestions for lamb, as described in the article “Chemistry-set wine pairing”:

Having roast lamb? Don’t waste it on an ill-advised red Bordeaux, the old standby trotted out by generations of sommeliers. Lamb’s characteristic flavour comes from thymol, an aromatic compound found in the oil of, yes, thyme. It’s also a flavour note associated with red wines from the southern Languedoc region of France, such as Minervois, Corbières or St. Chinian.

Other combinations mentioned in the article include:

rosemary – white wines from northern Alsace
pork – oaked red wines
curries – viognier
cinnamon – pinot noir, grenache, ice cider, oloroso sherry

François Chartier also introduces “bridge ingredients”. Mint, which goes well with sauvignon blanc, shares aroma compounds with parsley, fennel and tarragon. Based on this he theorizes that sauvignon blanc should also pair well with dishes based on these ingredients.

As far as I can see (with my very limited high school French) there are no links or references to all the other activities in the field: Heston Blumenthal’s pioneering of the concept together with François Benzi from Firmenich, the Food pairing website – not even to the TGRWT food blogging event Nevertheless it’s nice to see that the concept has now been applied to food and wine as well. As I don’t own the book yet I can’t tell whether François Chartier includes odor activity values in his discussion or not (but I certainly hope he does!).

I just discovered that The Atlantic features a blog by Grant Achatz of Alinea. Under the title “Back of the house” we get a peek “Inside the restlessly creative mind and kitchen of Grant Achatz” according to The Atlantic. Grant has so far reported from the Madrid Fusion in January (four posts) and in the latest post he describes how a visit to Japan has inspired him to explore manipulation of the environment at Alinea. Comments are allowed and Grant is actively involved in the discussions. Recommended reading!

The International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science (IJGFS) is planned for launch this year. Elsevir is mentioned as a publisher, but there is currently no further information on the Elsevir website. The journal is initiated by AZTI-tecnalia, a Spanish technology center specializing in marine and food research, in collaboration with ALICIA, a Catalan research centre focusing on technological innovation in kitchen science and the dissemination of agronourishment and gastronomic heritage. The restaurant Mugaritz and the websites aliment@tec and Ciencia y gastronomia also have their logos on the IJGFS website. The objective of the journal is to “fill the gap in the expanding fields of Gastronomy and Food Science, by adopting a scientific approach”.

In addition to scientific papers and review articles they plan to publish “original recipes” which is novel and unusual for a scientific journal. I must say that I’m curious about how the peer review process of “original recipe” contributions will be. How do you judge novelty and originality of a recipe? For scientific work this is easier as there are comprehensive databases of previously published work. No such database exists for recipes. Nevertheless, it is a goal for the journal to become a communication channel betwen chefs and food scientists, and we’ll probably see recipe contributions from both groups. If the concept of the journal works out and they actually manage to get contributions from chefs and scientists (and hopefully also some joint contributions) the journal will become a quite unique addition to the more food science oriented journals!

From the descriptions it seems that the journal will cover scientific, technological and practical aspects of molecular gastronomy, even though they completely avoid using the molecular gastronomy! Instead they list the following areas of interest: Gastronomy in perspective, Food Science and Gastronomy and Innovation in Gastronomy. Regardless of which labels they use, this all sounds very interesting to me!

An invitation to contribute has been sent out by email and in case you didn’t receive one but would like to contribute I’d recommend you to check out the online invitation and fill out the application form. I’ll return with an update once the journal goes live.

Hervé This has launched a new website: Travaux de Hervé This. As with his two blogs it’s difficult to follow unless you speak French. But at the same time it’s hard to get around Hervé since he’s a pioneer in the field! Machine translation of the French websites is available from Babelfish and Google, but the translations still leave a lot to be desired.

I recently stumbled across an interesting article on risk perception: If It’s Difficult to Pronounce, It Must Be Risky – Fluency, Familiarity and Risk perception. Researches from the University of Michigan had students read lists of fictious words and imagining that they were reading food lables and judge the hazard of each ingredient form very safe to very harmful. The words were divided in groups of easy-to-pronounce words (such as Magnalroxate) and difficult-to-pronounce words (i.e. Hnegripitrom). If I were to take the test I’d probably rank Magnalroxate as worse than Hnegripitrom – the “roxate” somehow reminds me of a pesticide or something like that. It turned out however (as expected) that substances with difficult-to-pronounce names were perceived as more harmful than substances with easy-to-pronounce names.

The result of the study is quite unfortunate, and chemists face a communication challenge here. When chemists give name to molecules they follow conventions agreed upon by IUPAC for systematic names. This can sometimes lead to extremely long and unpractical names, hence the use of trivial names. To give you an example of this glucose has the systematic name (2R,3R,4S,5R,6R)-6-(hydroxymethyl)-tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2,3,4,5-tetraol. If one where to judge by difficulty of pronounciation consuming this one should be pretty risky. On the other hand the compound known under the trivial name mustard gas could sound like a volatile cousin of Dijon mustard but is in fact a blistering agent, used in chemical warfare. The take home message is: Don’t judge a molecule by it’s name!

Talking about risk perception, the article reminded me of the warnings against the dangerous chemical DHMO, also known as dihydrogen monoxide. To read everything about the risks, visit the DHMO website. To read a little background information about the hoax, start with the wikipedia entry on the dihydrogen monoxide hoax. In case you’re lazy and don’t bother to check the links: dihydrogen monoxide is simply am uncommon scientific name for water. But don’t be lazey, the DHMO website is actually quite amuzing

[Article on risk perception was found via CEN blog]

Bruce Bryan demonstrated a glowing cocktail drink (top left), and tempted us with fluorescent cake frosting (top right). The chocolate surprise boxes included a lollipop (bottom left) and I was quite busy sucking the lollipop, listening to the translation of the Belgian/French/Spanish contributions, taking notes and photographing at the same time (bottom right).

The chocolate surprise box was one of the highlights at The Flemish Primitives that I’ve blogged about three times already. As I promised you in the last post I’d come back to the lollipop that was included in the box. Between chocolates number 2 and 3 Bruce Bryan entered the stage. The lights went off, we were instructed to suck intensely on the lollipos and then – when I took the lollipop out of my mouth it was glowing! I was sitting in the front row, but as I turned around I saw a fully packed auditorium of people sticking out their glowing tongues and holding a glowing lollipop in their hands. The only sound you could hear was a whispering choir of “wows”. That was quite amazing!

Bruce Bryan is a medical doctor by profession but he now spends most of his time trying to secure funding for his inventions related to bioluminescence. His primary invention is related to the use of green fluorescent proteins in combination with luciferin/luciferases as tumor markers by combining them with appropriate antibodies. I’m not able to explain the details, but you can find more information on Bruce’s homepage. The take home message is that it for instance can improve cancer surgery by litterarily being a “guiding light” for the surgeon.

Bioluminescence is emission of light by living organisms. Glow worms (which include Fire flies) and dinoflagellates are among the best known. Most dinoflagellates are marine plankton and they glow when the water is disturbed, for instance by waves crushing onto the shore or by the propeller of an outboard motor. Sitting in a small motorized boat, crusing through water that is glowing is truly amazing – I got to experience this some years ago! And the chemistry behind is also fascinating – I’ve included a little about that at the end of the post.

A lollipop submerged in a glass with hot water which makes it glow even brighter (yet still requiring 8 seconds of exposure time!).

I had a quick chat with Bruce Bryan in the break following his presentation and he was so kind to give me two lollipops to take home. Of the glowing kind, yes. That’s how I got the pictures in this post. He suggested that I hold a lollipop under hot running water and then spray the water clinging to the lollipop on a wall in a dark bathroom. – You’ll see the universe open up in front of you, Bruce told me enthusiastically. I tried it and you can see a picture below.

Unfortunately it has been hard to find funding for further development and FDA approval of the isolated luciferin/luciferase complexes of use in food. In fact, during his presentation Bruce showed us a slide with the following text:

(…) These “colorants” are not FDA approved and may not be by the patent expiration (10 years) if some broader shoulders don’t get involved. Optimistic estimates are 2 1/2 years and $5 million dollars to get these products approved. (…) we’ve cloned six genes, spent a lot on collection, have put our life savings and mortgages into making rapid chip based diagnostic and cancer imaging applications possible! Tragically we have not had ANY corporate interest.

Considering this it might be true what he jokingly said about the lollipops perhaps being the most expensive candy ever made Even ideas such as “Bud light” or “Pepsi light” (yes, that kind of light) were turned down by the respective companies. The only products to appear so far are various toy items which are available online through Biotoy. Bruce has also set up the companies Prolume, Biolume and Nanolight to further develop and market the technology. His own homepage also has some info and the full text of the patents is easily found with a google search.

The lollipops (top left) I got from Bruce were of a different kind than those in the chocolate surprise box. A nice “stars of the universe” effect was achieved by dipping the lollipop in water and spraying the bathroom wall (top right). The bottom pictures shows my glowing tongue and the lollipop (sorry for the blurry picture – exposure time is 1 second at ISO 1600).

The chemistry behind the glowing lollipops is fascinating. What is required is a luciferin and luciferase. These are not specific compounds but rather generic terms. Luciferin is a compound which acts as a substrate for the reaction that generates light (see list of luciferins) and luciferase is an enzyme which catalyzes the reaction. One of the most common luciferins is coentelerazine (shown in the figure below). In the presence of a suitable luciferase and oxygen it is oxidized to coenteleramide. The important thing here is that coenteleramide exists in an excited (energy rich) state. To get rid of the excess energy it emits a photon which we see as light. In the process the substrate (or fuel if you like) is used up and must be provided continously for constant light production. The enzyme luciferase is unchanged by the reaction and can be reused. Further information on coelenterazine chemistry and bioluminescence can be found in the book “Bioluminescence” by Osamu Shimomura who was awarded the 2008 Nobel prize in chemistry (together with Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien) for the discovery of green fluorescent protein.

In the presence of a luciferase and oxygen coentelerazine is oxidized to coenteleramide in an excited state. As coenteleramide reverts back to it’s ground state it emits light. The part of the coentelerazine molecule where the changes occur is indicated with blue color. The cartoon representation of luciferase is taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Update:
Bruce Bryan generously sent me a pack of different glowing candies and lollipops with different tastes and colors. IMO this surely has a market potential!

The label of the green and white lollipops reads: “Ingredients: Sucrose, corn Syrup, Tapioca & Chicory root starch, salt, natural and artificial flavors, 5 mg Renilla Luciferase protein and less than 0.2 mg Coelenterazine a naturally occurring anti-oxidant found in many fish”

English = Norwegian
beef brisket = oksebryst
sirloin = mørbrad
bottom round = rundbiff
round steak = flatbiff
chuck = høyrygg
roast beef = roastbiff
club steak = entrecotè
tenderloin = indrefilet
T-bone = T-ben
boneless strip = ytrefilet
ground beef = kjøttdeig
short ribs = bibringe
flank steak = slagside
stew meat = bankekjøtt

There are a couple of false friends here. The Norwegian translation of “round steak” literarily means “flat steak”, whereas the Norwegian “Rundbiff” which litterarily mens round beef is equivalent to the English “bottom round”. Easy to get confused here…

I recently became aware of an excellent site focusing solely on liquid nitrogen ice cream! Ever heard about “The institute for liquid nitrogen ice cream experimental studies” or TILNICES for short? They’re located at the Department of Chemistry at the Tennessee Technological University. It seems that the site is still under construction, but several recipes are already available plus a number of papers (available for download as pdf files).

[Thanks to John Placko on the MG mailing list for mentioning the site]

The Norwegian journalist, writer and food lover Andreas Viestad, known to many abroad for his books “Kitchen of light”, “Where Flavor Was Born: Recipes and Culinary Travels Along the Indian Ocean Spice Route” and two seasons of “New Scandinavian Cooking” on television (DVD of season one and two is available), has his debut today in The Washington Post with a new column dubbed “The Gastronomer”. Andreas has let me know that “It will be about food and science – as seen from the kitchen rather than the lab. It is an attempt to create a sort of maverick gastronomy, with recipes”.

The first column entitled “Like Water for Chocolate” is about chantilly butter and chocolate chantilly. Elaborations of Hervé This’ classic recipe in other words!

Andreas is not a scientist, but he has a remarkable capacity for absorbing the writings of Hervé This et al. and transform this into practical advice for the amateur home cook (and my guess is that many pro’s could learn a lot as well). So if you’re looking for extreme cooking á la Adrià, Andreas is not your kind of guy:

Spending hundreds of dollars on sous-vide equipment or ordering stuff weeks in advance and toiling for two days to make a “very interesting” side dish is for people in search of a hobby, not for people who want to make something nice for dinner.

A couple of years ago Andreas invited me to proof read one of his books from a chemical perspective. The book entitled “How to boil water” (only available in Norwegian) had a similar approach as his new column – it was about how the results of food science and molecular gastronomy could be applied to “normal” cooking at home. It was quite interesting, but also challenging, because as a scientist I’m used to a different level of precision when science is involved. But then on the other hand, what Andreas writes is much more readable and entertaining than what most scientists write!

Andreas has attended several of the Erice meetings (the International Workshop of Molecular Gastronomy) and he’s frequently in contact with Hervé This and Harold McGee from whom he gets a lot of inspiration. Although the chantilly is not exactly science, Hervé has told Andreas that:

From a scientific point of view it is nothing, a mere detail, but Pierre tells me it is one of the most useful things I have ever come up with.

In my opinion the chantilly is indeed a very good place to start! Hereby his new column is recommended! And if you have never made a chantilly, why not give the chocolate chantilly a try? I’ve posted a very short recipe previously, whereas Andreas has published a very comprehensive recipe in today’s column. Enjoy!

The long awaited website on foodpairings has now been launched, and they’ve also registred the corresponding blogspot name (which isn’t online yet as of today). The beautiful photos, great design and easy maneuvering makes it an excellent place to start if you are looking for some new and perhaps surprising combinations of foods. The foods are grouped into categories such as cocoa (?), dairy, fruits, meat, sea food and vegetables. One of the vegetables listed is cauliflower, and clicking it reveals that the topic of TGRWT #7 (caramelized cauliflower and cocoa) is one of several possible combinations. This is how it is displayed (an important detail is that the shorter the distance between the names, the more flavours they have in common):

(click to open the full picture from the foodpairing.be site)

As an added bonus interchangeable herbs and spices are also listed. This is how it works:

A food product has a specific flavour because of a combination of different flavours. Like basil taste like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),… So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel. The way to use it is to take from each branch of the plot one product and make a combination of those food products.

It should be noted that the proximity of the foods in the diagrams is based on the number of volatile compounds they have in common, not the actual key odorants. As I have elaborated on previously, pairings like these should preferably be based on odor activity values (OAV). Or to put it differently, if the volatiles shared by two foods are not the ones that actually contribute to the overall flavor, there is no reason to expect that they go well together from a chemical perspective (which is not to say that they won’t match, only that if they do, it is for some other reason). This is a limitation both of the foodpairing site, but of course also of the food blogging event They Go Really Well Together (or TGRWT) which I have initiated. Having said this, I still believe that the foodpairing site is an excellent place to start, especially if you like to improvise in the kitchen. I sincerely believe that the site will spark the creativity both of professional and amateur cooks (just like TGRWT already has)! I should add that the website is set up by the people behind Food for Design, so no wonder it looks so good!