Food Geeks: Liking to eat is one thing, but becoming really familiar with the exact time and water temperature to cook the perfect soft-boiled egg? … This elevates hunger to a seriously geeky level…

I kind of feel a finger pointing at me But believe it or not, there were more than 30.000 who visited the page Towards the perfect soft boiled egg last year (and it was first published in April), so my dear fellow food geek reading this: You are not alone!

If you’ve followed my blog more than a year you probably remember that I took part in The Flemish Primitives in Brugge in January 2009. The visit resulted in four blog posts (just in case you wonder what it’s all about): The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). It was a day packed with experiences and interesting meetings. But let us not ponder more with 2009 – Bernard Lahousse has let me know that the next event is just around the corner. In fact it’s only a couple of weeks away. Like last year the venue is Concertgebouw Brugge and the date is February 8th, 2010 (Yes – you have to hurry up with your reservations!).

As for the program, I quote from the invitation folder (my highlights):

Whereas during the first edition in 2009 the academic part, the keynotes and the chefs’ presentations were presented separately, they will be fully integrated for this edition. You may expect a very lively day during which “The Flemish Primitives” will present their recipes and projects to demonstrate the Flemish culinary identity. The chefs want to demonstrate that the Flemish gastronomy has reached a whole new level that does not copy chefs from abroad.

Every culinary project starts with inspiration. The chefs will start by introducing somebody who has inspired their work: expect musicians, architects, choreographers, etc. During the presentations the problems and challenges the chefs encountered while working on the recipe or project will be explained and illustrated by reverting to the international chefs (such as Joan Roca and Jonnie Boer), specialists (such as Harold McGee and Brian McKenna) and the teams of scientists of the different participating universities (Gent, Leuven, PIH Kortrijk, TU Delft & The Culinary Institute of America).

For registration and more information head over to The Flemish Primitives website. And if you want to participate, be prepared to pay the price of €295. For the food-science-art show you’re gonna get it’s probably a small price to pay

A picture is worth a thousand words, and this is also true for recipes. Several of you who have downloaded “Texture – A hydrocolloid recipe collection” have asked for pictures and now it’s time to do something about that! A picture can illustrate texture well and is an excellent supplement to the descriptions. I therefore invite to you to contribute to the recipe collection by taking pictures to accompany the recipes. But before you run to grab your camera, please take a note of the following:

• Pictures should clearly show the component described in the recipe. If you take a close up picture against a neutral background it’s good if one still has a feeling of what the scale is.
• Only send a picture if you actually followed the recipe! This way the picture can also serve as an indication that the recipe as been tested. However, if you for some reason have modified a recipe for a better or different result I would also be very interested in hearing about this.
• Pictures should be in focus and well lit. But remember that Photoshop can do wonders, so please do send pictures even though the colors seem a little dull.
• Pictures will be cropped to a 1:1 aspect ratio as shown above
• Preferred minimum resolution is 450 x 450 pixels
• It’s a requirement that the picture is taken by you and that you are willing to provide it for use in “Texture – A hydrocolloid recipe collection” under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License since the whole recipe collection is published under such a license
• I reserve the right to crop pictures and do color/brightness/sharpness adjustments
• I reserve the right not to use pictures received (and I only intend to include one picture for every recipe)
• Pictures will be attributed to the photographer as shown in the above illustration.

If you have read the above and agree you’re ready to send your texture pictures to me at this email address: texture.pictures (at) gmail.com. Remember to include the name of the recipe photographed and your name as it should appear under the picture. Thank you very much for helping me make this collection even more useful

A while ago I came across the article “Christmas gingerbread (Lebkuchen) and Christmas cheer–review of the potential role of mood elevating amphetamine-like compounds formed in vivo and in furno” (abstract from NCBI, free full text pdf download from publisher). The paper reviews a hypothesis proposed by Alexander Shulgin in a series of papers appearing in Nature in the 60’s. Shulgin noted that allylbenzenes and propenylbenzens found in many spices are “merely lacking ammonia to become amphetamines”. The author reviews the evidence that such substances may be converted in the body to psychoactive metabolites, but concludes that the evidence is equivocal at best. However, the author launches an alternative theory:

“… the formation of these compounds during the cooking process, what I have called “in furno.” Examination of the Lebkuchen recipe in Table 3 reveals chemical constituents that, when heated together in furno might plausibly result in some ammonia addition to the alkenylbenzene double bonds, which would lead to the presence in the Lebkuchen of 4-methoxyamphetamine (PMA) from (E)-anethole and 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyamphetamine (HMA) from eugenol.”

But as the author prudently add: “Until the appropriate laboratory and clinical investigations are performed, it is merely a subject of speculation and fantasy.” Nevertheless is an entertaining paper to read, and I’m sure that this kind of “science triva” can cheer up discussions around the dinner tables in an otherwise dark December. And I must add that I really love the term in furno (i.e. in the oven, during the cooking/baking process) used alongside the more common in vivo and in vitro.

I’ve illustrated the proposed reactions in the scheme below. Anethole and eugenol are found in cloves/cinnamon and anise seeds respectively. Baker’s ammonia is known to chemists as ammonium carbonate, but also under names such as salt of hartshorn. It has a very strong smell of ammonia and upon heating it decomposes and releases ammonia which could possibly react with the allyl/propenyl groups.

[Found via the very funny NCBI ROFL blog]

If Richard Wiseman’s fork balancing trick is not challenging enough, why not try the fork balancing trick I did for part 8 (where I encourage experimentation in the kitchen) of my Ten tips for practical molecular gastronomy series. You only need two forks, two skewers, a wine cork and a little patience. If interested you can read more about the physics behind the balancing fork trick.

As the name suggests, the TGIF posts are a little less serious than what I otherwise post here at Khymos. I hope you enjoy it

Nathan Myhrvold giving a TED talk about some of his many interest (click image to see video). Photo by Neil Hunt from flickr.com (CC BY-NC 2.0).

If you’ve played around with sous vide cooking there’s a good chance that you’ve visited the massive eGullet thread on sous vide (currently spanning more than 100 pages and 3000 posts), and in that case you’ll be familiar with Nathan’s many well informed posts on sous vide. There have been rumours about an upcoming book for quite some time, and things are getting more and more exciting. The last I heard was that he had a team of 5 people working on a book about sous-vide. This has now increased to a team of 15 people, including 5 professional chefs, a photographer, an art director, writers and editors. And there’s more:

“The project has grown in size and scope. Originally planned as a 300-page discussion of sous vide, an increasingly popular restaurant technique of cooking food in vacuum-sealed bags in warm water baths, the book has swelled to 1,500 pages that will also cover microbiology, food safety, the physics of heat transfer on the stove and in the oven, formulas for turning fruit and vegetable juices into gels, and more.”

Wow! Let’s hope that Nathan’s “one year left” statement is actually true this time. I’m really looking forward to see this book!

In New York the Experimental Cuisine Collective has been arranging regular seminars since 2007, in Paris Hervé This’ monthly seminar has been running for many years – and now finally the London Gastronomy Seminars are about to launch. To their upcoming event on November 30th they have invited Hervé This, Tony Conigliaro and John Forbes to speak about on Flavor extraction. You might remember that I’ve blogged about the wonders of extraction here previously (focusing on water, ethanol, oil and more specifically on espresso and walnut liqueur) – it’s a really fascinating topic and I wish I could take part in the seminar! If you’re in London or live nearby I would strongly recommend you to visit the seminar

I quote the following from the job description:

The professor´s duties will comprise research and teaching in Culinary Chemistry. The professor will have an established track record of research in some area of food science or food chemistry and it is expected that the appointee continues to work in and increase his or hers reputation in that area at the same time as initiating new research. The professor will need to have excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

The appointee should have qualifications within one or more of the following core research areas:

• Observations in professional kitchens to permit the scientific description and subsequent modelling of processes used for cooking of food to optimize gastronomic quality.
• Development of new cooking strategies and methods to be established in restaurant kitchens, domestic cooking and small scale food preparation in general.
• Transfer of knowledge and traditions from cuisines with different historic and ethnic background into a scientific framework with the purpose of design of new dishes and meals.
• Develop food and beverage model systems facilitating controlled flavour and texture development in foods and beverages.
• Explore the creative and artistic interaction between art and science in relation to food and beverages and their combination.

Head over to the Danish site to read the complete announcement text. The deadline for applications is January 5, 2010.

This month’s round of TGRWT is hosted by John Sconzo over at Docsconz, and the foods to pair this time are pumpkin and cooked chicken.* As always you can find instructions on how to participate in the announcement post. If you are new to TGRWT (which stands for They Go Really Well Together), check out the round-ups of the previous 19 rounds!

* In case you wondered why the link to the announcement posts includes lemon grass: There was some confusion regarding how to read the charts at the foodpairing website. The initial suggestion was to use pumpkin and lemon grass, but his has now been changed to pumpkin and cooked chicken.

Here at Khymos I aim to cover things related to food and chemistry, and as I stumbled over a periodic table of cupcakes (with clickable “elements” linked to recipes) I couldn’t resist to dig a little deeper. And look what I found! The periodic table of elements is iconic, but the periodic table has also become an organizing metaphor for all sorts of things, including food. The Internet database of periodic tables holds more periodic tables than you could ever dream of, but it’s not complete – at least not with regards to food. Here are the food related periodic tables that I’ve been able to find. Fun? Yes! Useful? No, not really At the end of the post I’ve also included examples of how the real periodic table of elements can be illustrated in a more or less edible fashion. All images are linked to the page where I found them. Are you aware of other periodic tables of food? Please let me know and I’ll include them in this post.

Available as a poster. HighRes available here.

Available as a poster

In case you wondered, it’s a periodic table of breakfast cereals!


HighRes flash version

Condiments that periodically go bad

Cupcakes – what else! And each “element” is linked to a recipe. Very well made!

Period table of food from Disneyland in Los Angeles (Photo: Martin Lersch). Click for a larger image.

Available as a poster

Available as a poster

Available as a poster

Available as a poster

HighRes version available

Two cropped scans available from Slashfood. Original was published in “Simple Life” fall 2006.

Available as a poster

Available as a poster

The menu at “Miracle of Science Bar & Grill” in Boston is a periodic table painted on the wall. More info at the C&EN blog. Photo: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

The real periodic table of elements represented in food
If you think fitting some kind of food into a periodic table is stretching a little too far, why not make an edible version of the real periodic table? In the process you may even learn the name of some elements

Photo by melpenguin

A nice idea for Halloween?

As the name suggests, the TGIF posts are a little less serious than what I otherwise post here at Khymos. I hope you enjoy it