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.

Bruno Goussault, Sang-Hoon Degeimbre and Thomas Bühner busy giving their sous vide master class

As a scientist the master classes were of greatest interest to me, especially since the science played a less central role on the second day of TFP. I attended one master class about sous vide by Bruno Goussault, Sang-Hoon Degeimbre and Thomas Bühner and one by Quico Sosa on his range of flavors, extracts and condiments. Expect separate blog posts about these master classes.

Quico Sosa passionately advocated the use of pure flavors in cooking. -We don’t know the flavor of a fresh product anymore because we can’t buy it!, he claimed.

For the first time this year a number of awards were handed out. The “TFP Research award for the researcher or lab that has done remarkable work with importance for chefs” (only papers by Belgian scientists published during the last year were considered for this price though) went to a group from the Catholic University of Leuven who studied the flavor of a ripening banana: Instrumental based flavour characterisation of banana fruit (DOI: 10.1016/j.lwt.2009.05.024). The “TFP award for an international personality for supporting chefs in culinary solutions for go-between science and gastronomy” (how can anyone remember that name?) went to Bruno Goussault, the grandfather of sous vide who has more or less thaught all the major chefs most of what they know about sous vide.

Bruno Goussault receives the award for his life-long dedication to promote sous vide cooking from Bernard Lahousse

All in all it was once again a fascinating event. I admire TFP for bringing together science and cooking. It’s done in a very subtle way, the emphasis is always on the cooking and the chefs. Personally I could have wished for a little more focus on the science this year, but given that there are mainly chefs in the audience it’s a difficult balance. But with the delicate “wrapping” that TFP provides I’m sure the chefs could have taken a larger dose of science

René Redzepi won the Culinary Linchpin award of the year, and a bit startled he asked: What award was this? What did I win? (I admit that I didn’t know what a linchpin was either…)

Gene Bervoets holding one of the TFP awards which also deserves a mention: the prizes were 3D reproductions of the tiny air channels inside pears and apples as studied by Bart Nicolaï and his team using the ESRF synchrotron facility in Grenoble. Quite fascinating!

René Redzepi cooking on stage with Michel Bras and Sergio Herman

Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson lit a fire on stage to grill white cabbage. Good thing the smoke alarm didn’t go off!

With the risk of totally missing the point of his presentation: Kristof Coppens handled liquid nitrogen in a glass container without wearing safety goggles (yes – it was pyrex glass, but still…). This is stupid! Everyone: Please don’t learn from his example! Learn how to handle liquid nitrogen safely: Always wear safety goggles. Glass can easily shatter due to the extreme temperature differences involved.

And last but not least: Dominique “Shock-o-latier” Persoone left no one disappointed! Here his “Brazilian lips” (in co-operation with Sergio Herman and Alex Atalla) from the Gala dinner. When served a droplet of liquid was added to the sigarette, generating smoke!

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:

1. Empirically based pairings. These are the good combinations of ingredients (or even food and wine) that more or less all cooking relies on. An excellent source for such flavor pairings is The Flavor Bible. If one can talk about any chemical principles at all it would be related to balancing the basic tastes and using contrasting elements. But the pleasantness of the empirical based pairings are probably also often subject to the exposure effect – you get used to something and eventually start liking it.
2. Predicted aroma similarity. This is the broad category that I’ve previously referred to as flavor pairing. It can be further subdivided into the following categories:
   1. Predicted aroma similarity based on overlap of one or a few volatiles
   2. Predicted aroma similarity based on the number of overlapping volatiles
   3. Predicted aroma similarity based on overlap between one or more of the high concentration volatiles
   4. Predicted aroma similarity based on overlap between high impact odorants (volatiles to compare are first selected based on OAV, AEDA, CHARM, FD …)
   5. Predicted aroma similarity based on similar neurological responses (as judged by fMRI or any other technique)

The reason I propose aroma similarity for category 2 is to avoid confusion with category 1. Also, such a term does not suggest that only combining the two will yield heavenly combinations. To a chef, it may even be the opposite, as foods or ingredients selected based on aroma similarity may be too similar if used by themselves. The predictive power in category 2 increases from 2a, 2b and 2c (where it is zero or very close to zero) to 2d and 2e (where predictions make sense). Personally I have always thought that what I previously referred to as flavor pairings should at least be of category 2d based on this, but I realize that I probably havent expressed this clear enough before. Another obvious reason to clearify the terms is of course that some of the discussion that arises around flavor pairing stems from different understandings and definitions of what flavor pairing is.

From what I’ve heard the flavor pairing examples Heston Blumenthal has come up with (or at least some of them) belong to category 2d/2e thanks to proprietary research that was made available to him. But since the background data has not been published (and probably never will be) it is difficult to evaluate this further. I also seem to remember that Heston has talked about flavor pairings of category 2a, 2b and/or 2c based on data from the VCF database (I think it was in one of the RSC videos). I do not know in which category the example from François Benzi (indole in jasmine and pork liver) belongs, but since indole was mentioned specifically it maybe category 2a unless indole is in fact present in high concentrations or even is a high impact odorant.

In the food blogging event They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT) I have tried to argue that flavor pairing at least should be based on category 2d types of pairings. But due to the very limited amount of data available it has not been possible to asses whether the pairings published by Heston actually do have an overlap of the impact odorants. From what I’ve heard the foodpairing website (old .be site, new .com site) put together by Bernard Lahousse and Lieven De Couvreur does incorporate threshold values and thereby is based on the impact/activity of the odors and hence falls into category 2d, but regrettably very little has been published about the underlying methodology used to create the website.

Let me also add that although I firmly believe that it makes sense to talk about activity or impact of odorants, I have previously addressed some of the limitations with odor activity values, and I quote myself:

It’s only fair enough to add that the concept of odor activity values has it’s limitations. Some are related to matrix effects, because thresholds are not necessarily recorded in a matrix mimicking the food product. Possible synergies between flavour compounds are disregarded (examples are known where sub-threshold concentrations are detected in the presence of other volatile compounds). Also, the underlying assumption that the odor intensity increases linearily is not quite correct. The typical intensity vs. concentration curve is more ‘S’ shaped with an expansive, linear and compressive region as shown below. At low concentrations (expansive region) synergism (also known as hyperadditivity or mutual enhancement) is observed. At high concentrations (compressive region) antagonism (or subadditivity or mutual suppresion) is observed. This means that a high OAV overestimates and a low OAV underestimates the impact of the individual compounds.

The fact that Wender Bredie in his studies found absolutely no correlation between the hedonic score of the food pairings and the overlap of volatile flavors could at first be a little disappointing. But I believe the only conclusion that can be drawn using data from VCF (which has information about volatiles and some concentration data) is that type 2b/2c predictions are very weak. I strongly believe that one should take into account some kind of metric to filter out the odors that do not contribute to the overall aroma of the food.

For fun I checked Wender’s list of “the good, the bad and the ugly” using The Flavor Bible (a good source of category 1 flavor pairings) and the foodpairing website (presumably category 2c and/or 2d predictions). This is what I found:

It is interesting that The Flavor Bible (being purely empirical) actually mentions three of the “good” pairings. That it also mentions one of the “ugly” pairings is a good reminder that binary mixtures are not actually food and this real life is more complex. And it is also peculiar that all the garlic combinations were perceived as “ugly”. In a moussaka for instance one would combine cinnamon and garlic (with many other spices and herbs of course), and it is indeed quite delicious. Moving on to the predictions from foodpairing.be it is not so easy to draw any conclusions, but it is interesting that the four predicted aroma similarity pairs fall into the whole range of hedonic categories (i.e. ugly, bad and good). These could be interesting cases in a follow up study at lower concentrations as Wender mentioned in his presentation.

Based on the distinction between the different types of flavor pairing suggested above the flavor pairing hypothesis may be reformulated 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. Needless to say, the prediction should be of type 2d or 2e. Experience from the TGRWT rounds further suggests that some experimentation may be needed to find the right balance between the two and that contrasting elements are very important, otherwise the combination may turn out quite bland.

So to conclude:  What I’m after from a gastronomical perspective is a tool to pair foods and suggest extra ingredients based on aroma similarity. This first and foremost becomes interesting if the combinations are novel or have a surprise element. Because of the aroma similarity the complexity of the combination will presumably be less than anticipated. Thinking about the Wundt curve (which I learnt about in Michael Bom Frøst’s presentation in Copenhagen – more on that in a separate post) which suggests that pleasantness first increases and then decreases with increasing complexity, a less than anticipated complexity combined with novelty/surprise could perhaps be what we are looking for when we try to create new and delicious food.

It’s soon time for the third edition of The Flemish Primitives and registration has now opened. The Flemish Primitives wants to challenge Belgian gastronomy and bring together chefs from all over the world to meet and exchange ideas built on innovation. The top name this year is without doubt the chef René Redzepi of Noma, the world’s best restaurant according to Restaurant magazine, but “the Flemish primitives” will be present (a group of Belgian chefs) as well as guests and scientists. And there are a lot of new things going on as well. There will be master classes on a range of topics including meat cuts and aging, fish, precise temperatures, cheese and beer pairing, fermentation and pickling and liquid nitrogen to mention a few.

Furthermore a research award has been announced in order to encourage scientists to share research results relevant for gastronomy with chefs and to promote research in the domain of gastronomy. The announcement states that “scientists often have know-how that is very useful for chefs in their quest for novel or improved courses” which is very true. During the last decade we have seen a number of very successful chef-scientist partnerships. Unfortunately there is a small catch with the prize (at least for the majority of my readers): The applicant should have the Belgian nationality or working for a Belgian company or institute (if this applies to you, take note of the application deadline which is Sunday February 13th!).

Another big change is that the event has outgrown the Concertgebouw in Brugge, so this year’s event will be held at Kursaal Oostende in Belgium with an auditorium seating 2000. And with so much going on it’s probably a good idea that they have stretched the event to two days now, starting on Sunday March 13th with the masters classes and a gala dinner, and followed by keynote presentations given by chefs and scientists on Monday March 14th.

If you’re not familiar with the The Flemish Primitives event you can get an impressions from the last two editions from previous blog posts:

TFP 2009
The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1)
Chocolate surprise (part 2)
Heston Blumenthal (part 3)
Glowing lollipops (part 4)

TFP2010
Overview of the event (part 1)
Inspiration from Asia (part 2)
More inspiration from Asia (part 3)
Interview with Bernard Lahousse (part 4)
Gadgets (part 5)
Tomato gels with the pectin that’s there (part 6)

I’ve written a couple of posts about The Flemish Primitives 2010 event (and there are more to come), but I also wanted to do an interview with Bernard Lahousse, the project manager of the event. Bernard first contacted me back in 2006 and we met at the EuroFoodChem conference in Paris in 2007. Those who’ve followed Khymos for a while may remember pointers to the “Food for design” blog and the foodpairing website which Bernard has set up.

ML: It seems you have always had an interest for things in the cross section of science and art? When we first came in contact you were writing the “Food for design” blog which covered gastronomy, science and design – what happend to it?

BL: Indeed, I’ve always been interested in the cross-section between different disciplines. Not only science-art or science-gastronomy, but many more. My belief is that the interesting stuff is happening where people with different background meet. As I lack time (and also Lieven), we made a choice to put Food for design on hold and concentrate on other topics. For me that’s foodpairing and my company. For Lieven it is his PhD.

ML: Could you briefly describe your educational background and how you ended up as a project manager for The Flemish Primitives?

BL: I have a master in bio-engineering, and a master in intellectual law. But I’ve always been interested in gastronomy. As I’m one of the founders of the Foundation (Flanders Taste Foundation) organizing The Flemish Primitives and really the intermediate between industry, chefs and universities it was quite logical to become the project leader; but it is still a hobby (none of us is gaining some money with organizing this – it is really out of love for gastronomy). But all of the innovations presented at TFP come from myself, from HPP to Dominique his foams, they were all initiated by me (so quite logical I’m the project manager)

ML: I find it difficult to put TFP in a specific category – it is part gastronomy, part science. How would you in as few words as possible define The Flemish Primitives? And the company “Sense for taste” where you work, could you briefly explain the business concept?

BL: The Flemish Primitives aspires to become the most innovative and creative culinary event in the world. The way we do it is by combining different players: chefs, scientists, companies, artists,… So The Flemish Primitives wants to give you a glimpse of what is possible in the future in gastronomy and food. It is meant to inspire and let people start dreaming.

In “Sense for taste” we position ourselves as a foodlab increasing the efficiency in food product development. Foodpairing is one of the methods we use. So we do consultancy, but we also develop our own products. We work mainly for the big food multinationals, but also for farmers with a passion for products…We are with 3 partners; an ex-Michelin star chef Peter Coucquyt, a product developer Johan Langenbick and a scientist myself.

ML: Could you give one example of how science, gastronomy and art have been combined into something which is more than just the sum of three parts?

BL: The plates from Sergio Herman e.g.

ML: Very often cooking comes first and is later explained by science, possibly with a few adjustments. Do you have any examples were it started with science (or technology) sparked the creativity of a chef?

BL: The system of using pectin methylesterase naturally present to make gels out of tomato, was initiated by science and executed by chefs afterwards.

ML: What are the biggest challenges you have faced when working with TFP?

BL: We don’t lack ideas/content. But to organize an event like this you should need at least 1 or more persons working the whole year on this event to prepare and we lack for the moment the means to make this a professional organisation (it is still like a bunch of friends). We are still a private organization without any support from the Government, but hoping that will change in the future.

ML: Your debut was last year, this year amazingly all seats were sold out (BTW – how many tickets were sold?) – what are your plans and expectations for next year and the years to come? Will you remain in Belgium or “go global”? What would be a “dream come true” for TFP?

BL: We sold around 400 tickets, the rest was taken by food companies. My dreams are to build a platform with Belgian chefs, universities, companies,… The outcome of this cooperation will be shown each year at The Flemish. There are some plans and requests to go global, but these are still plans for the moment.

ML: A final question – when working all day long with food and The Flemish Primitives, how has your work influenced your own cooking at home? And what is your favorite dish?

BL: The way of using meat and fish changed at lot (now mostly low temperature). For the rest my cooking changed a lot as my using now different products inspired by what chefs are using. My favorite dish; that’s a hard question. It will probably contain fish and then some vegetables also low temperature treated.

ML: Thank you very much!

(The interview was done by email since Bernard had a pretty hectic time schedule on the day of the event.)

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I also visited The Flemish Primitives in 2009. You can read more about that in my four posts from last year: The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). Final note to readers: This year my travel expenses were covered by TFP and the tourism bureau of Brugge.

The available litterature in English (including blogs) on popular food science focuses mainly on Western cooking, although the academic litterature on Asian foods is catching up quickly. Although widespread and apparently “well known”, Asian cooking is still largely being referred to in broad categories such as Chinese, Indian etc. Having spent 10 years of my childhood in Asia I’ve always had the feeling that this wasn’t quite right, and I do indeed look forward to learn more about the science aspects of Asian food in the years and decades to come. In one of the breakout sessions (more about those in a separate post) Alok Nandi made a point that Indian cuisine is as diverse as the European cuisine. With this background it is interesting to note that two of the chefs presenting at The Flemish Primitives 2010 had taken their inspiration from Asia.


Japanese pressure treatment vessel (picture from Peter Goossens powerpoint presentation)

On a study trip to Japan, Peter Goossens (chef at Hof Van Cleve) and 15 other chefs were apparently the first Europeans admitted to the Hattori chef’s school (Wikipedia entry – I’m not 100% sure if this is the right “Hattori”) for a 3 day intensive course. One thing they were served were sardines treated at a pressure of 1000 bars. They were surprised by the texture and flavor, and when talking to Bernard Lahousse about it he put them in contact with Stefan Töpfl at the German Institute of Food Technologies. Töpfl’s group works with food processing, and one topic of interest is high pressure processing: it turns out that treating food for 2 min @ 6000 bar is an efficient way of pasteurizing (see for example an article from the institute on poultry pasteurization).

Stefan Töpfl being interviewed by Bernard Lahousse. Peter Goossens in white jacket relaxing at the bar. Photo by Piet De Kersgieter

But there is more to high pressure processing than pasteurization. Oysters, clams and shellfish in general for instance are vacuum packed and the pouches are water cooled throughout the process. This allows for “cold pasteurization”. Apart from the fact that no heating is involved (and hence the flavor remains unaltered) there are several other benefits of the heating process: oysters nearly double in size and “fill the shells”, shellfish are generally easier to open, crustaceans are easily descaled, taste is enhanced and there is less need for salt. The technique can also be applied to other foods such as fruit which turns sweeter after the high pressure treatment. The explanation for the enhanced taste and sweetness is that the water binding capacity of the foods increases, and hence there is more free water to dissolve and carry tastes. Other applications include treatment of guacamole for retention of the green color and flavor impregnation (i.e. oysters impregnated with champagne!).

Every single attendant to TFP2010 was served a plastic tray with four different high pressure processed clams/shellfish/oysters (I admit that I’m confused by the nomenclature here – seems there are differences between languages as well as to how generic the terms are used)

Quite surprisingly shellfish samples were handed out as you can see from the pictures. In my opinion they were very juicy, not stringly, a little salty and had a fresh taste. But I have to admit that I eat shellfish so seldomly that it’s hard for me to really compare the high pressure treated ones to more conventional shellfish. As Bernard Lahousse was called up on the stage he also presented a flavor pairing tip for oysters based on methyl hexanoate, which they interestingly share with kiwis (and passion fruit!). Many more flavor pairing tips can of course be found on the the foodpairing website. And the foodpairing blog published the recipe for Kiwître in 2007, a dish invented by Sang Hoon Degeimbre (chef of L’air du temps) which combines oysters and kiwi.

Bernard Lahousse explaning how kiwis and oysters have methyl hexanoate in common.

Further reading: A quick google search yields numerous hits on high pressure processing of food, including the companies High Pressure Dynamics and Avure which manufacture the processing equipment. There are many scientific publications on the topic (including one on high pressure induced gel of sardine – perhaps this is this what Peter Goossens and his colleagues were served when visiting Japan?), and wikipedia also has a nice introduction to high pressure food preservation. Youtube has several videos demonstrating HPP.

Next up from TFP2010: more Asian inspiration with Sang Hoon Degeimbre and kimchi!

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I also visited The Flemish Primitives in 2009. You can read more about that in my four posts from last year: The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). Final note to readers: This year my travel expenses were covered by TFP and the tourism bureau of Brugge.

Again I was lucky that all the practical details worked out so I could attend this year’s Flemish Primitives in Brugge. For some one who’s not attended, it’s not so easy to grasp the concept and ideas behind The Flemish Primitives (TFP). And I admit, even though I’ve been there twice it’s not so easy to convey it in a short way. First of all the name is rather cryptic (unless you’re into art) as it refers to early Netherlandish painting. The link to food is described as follows by the organizers of the event (my highlights):

In the 15th and 16th century, ’The Flemish Primitives’ were masters in combining their talent with new techniques. Techniques they developed by interacting with other disciplines like manuscripting, sculpting, etc. This way of working changed the painting techniques in all of Western Europe forever. The event ‘The Flemish Primitives’ wants to continue in the same spirit. Respect for food products and beverages, the knowledge of the classic cooking techniques combined with a stimulation of new techniques and creativity. By promoting interaction between scientists, the world’s most famous chefs and artists, the event wants to deliver a creative boost for the food industry and gastronomy in Belgium and the world.

Considering last year’s sucess it was no big surprise that this year’s event was sold out (and the foyer of the Concertgebouw was equally full in the coffee breaks). And with the memories from last year I arrived in Brugge with great expectations. One main difference from previous years was that the scientific parts were much better integrated throughout the day. Scientists were on stage alongside the chefs, explaining their work. Also, contrary to last year’s back stage kitchen, they had now moved the kitchen onto the stage, flanked by a bar, some sofas and laboratory mezzanine. A good decision!

Flavor pairing (or food pairing as they call it) was the main topic of last year, but even this year flavor pairing was mentioned throughout the day by several people. It’s also obvious that Bernard Lahousse and his team have worked hard to get some of the sponsors of the event to incorporate the idea into their printed material (Belcolade and SOSA).

Flavor pairing diagrams like this one were incorporated into the Belcolade (= Belgian chocolate company) handouts. Similar diagrams for a great number of food items can be found at the food pairing website.

As I see it, one of the main objects of TFP is to find (or even create) new sources of creativity for chefs. And art, science and cooking can indeed be a fruitfull mix for creative exchange and development. Working as a chef is all about constantly finding new sources of creativity. Even among the very best, one can find signs of creative fatigue – it suffices to mention Ferran Adria who recently announced that el Bulli would close down for two years (2012 and 2013). He gives several reasons, but The Times Online reports that according to Spanish culinary insiders the “effort needed to keep dreaming up mouthwatering wonders, has worn him down” (more in a recent Q&A from WSJ). Ferran does however promise to be back in 2014!

TFP 2010 included presentations of five novel technologies and concepts. These included the use of very high pressure for processing of seafood and fruit. This is commonly done in the food industry for preservation purposes, but now it was used mainly for the textural and flavor changes induced. A second device shown was a combined vacuum and freezing chamber were the freezing was effected by liquid nitrogen, allowing virtually any temperature between 0 and -150 °C to be reached within minutes. Regrettably I missed part of the presentation of the third device (due to break out sessions that were running alongside the main program – more on those later). But from the pictures it seemed to be a microfluidic device for precise delivery of flavor essences (feel free to fill me out on this one in the comments!). The last machine presented was a kitchen emulsifier for preparation of emulsions as viscous as Nutella. I’ll post pictures and more info on the gadgets in a separate post.

In the preparations to this years event surveys with chefs and consumers had led to the forumlation of 10 statements on the identity of Belgian gastronomy, which in essence are not too different from the Statement on the ‘new cookery’ which was formulated by Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and Harold McGee back in 2006. I think they are well formulated and it’s hard to disagree with any of the statements. I also belive that most of them could be adopted by many chefs world wide by substituting their own country into the statements. I bring the statements here in extenso for your convenience:

1. Local ingredients. Work with regional products.
2. High-quality ingredients. Work with products of the best quality available preferably in Belgium. Work with seasonal products in the right season.
3. Producer orientation. Chefs have the power to control the quality of the ingredients by making specific choices and demands. Belgian chefs are partly responsible for the motivation of producers to supply the highest quality.
4. Consumer orientation. Chefs have the power to broaden the palate and to revalue or upgrade specific products by paying attention to forgotten, seasonal and local products, or products with low intrinsic value.
5. Inventiveness and openness. Be open to new techniques and products. Strive for innovation and improvement.
6. Inventiveness and cooperation. Strive for intensive cooperation between chefs, the industry and the scientific community. Information exchange is particularily important, also between chefs.
7. Innovation and tradition. Innovation and tradition are not opposites. Have respect for traditional Belgian cuisine by including this respect or tradition as such in dishes.
8. Tastiness and well-being. Strive for food which is tasty above all, but also keep in mind to provide a state of well-being during and after the meal.
9. Moral responsibility. Strive for the use of products that have been produced in an ethical, ecological and sustainable manner.
10. Multisensorial tastiness. Strive for an optimum and ample stimulation of all senses of the consumer. Create a socially agreeable and exclusive experience.

Apart from all the journalists present this year there were also a couple of food bloggers present. You may already know the blogs which mainly focus on restaurant reviews: Very good food (Denmark), Food snob blog (UK), High end food (Germany), Food intelligence (France), Cuisiner en ligne (France) and Gastros on tour. I had a chat with some of them and they all have non-food day time jobs, just like myself. Like last year I plan to write several posts on various topics from TFP – and I will publish this as soon as time allows. But in the mean time, check out the blogs mentioned for a perspective and covering of TFP 2010 that will probably be different from mine

Update: There were more food bloggers present: Coolinary (Belgium), Der Kompottsurfer (Germany).

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I also visited The Flemish Primitives in 2009. You can read more about that in my four posts from last year: The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). Final note to readers: This year my travel expenses were covered by TFP and the tourism bureau of Brugge.

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

I had a wonderful trip to Brugge/Bruges to attend the foodpairing seminar The Flemish Primitives. I got to meet many interesting people including Heston Blumenthal, Peter Barham, Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page, Ben Roche and Tony Conigliaro to mention a few. I also finally had the opportunity to talk to my fellow Swedish food bloggers Lisa Förare Winbladh (Matälskaren, Swedish only but Google can translate) and Malin Sandström (Matmolekyler, Swedish only but Google can translate) who’ve recently been awarded money to write a Swedish book about molecular gastronomy for home cooks. I even talked to several people who read Khymos! It’s always nice when I can attach some faces to the crowd out there in the big, unpersonal blogosphere.

As you see from this long post the day was packed and believe it or not – there will be a couple more posts in the next few days. One on the surprise “chocolate box” (for me this was the highlight), a summary of the interview with Heston Blumenthal and some info on the chemistry behind the glowing lollipops! I’ll also try do dig up the recipe for the chocolate dip that came with our lunch fries.


In case you wondered: Peter always wears penguins!

Peter Barham (physicist, author of The science of cooking) started the day by giving an introduction to the scientific approach to cooking. Cooking started a lot of science, and chemistry (and alchemy) has origins that can be traced back to the observation of how food changed when cooked. And as a side note: even the word chemistry is linked to food through the greek word Khymos Until about 100 years ago there was a clear link between cooking and chemistry, but then came a period where scientists mostly did not bother much about food. Until Nicholas Kurti entered the scene: that’s the guy who said that “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés”. Four examples were used to illustrate how science can help chefs.

1) Conflicting reasons are given for why salt should be added to blanching water to retain the green color of vegetables. Contrary to popular belief salt does not raise the boling temperature of the water with more than a fraction of a degree. Science tells us that there really isn’t any good reason for adding salt to the water when blanching vegetables.

2) Science also provides insight to what happens when we heat up meat. When heated the meat first gets tougher. At around 40-45 °C the meat proteins start to denature, and at 55 °C the meat goes from tender to tough. Prolonged heating above 55 °C however will cause the collagen to dissolve into soft gelatin.

3) Thanks to science we now have a vide range of gelling agents (or hydrocolloids if you like) available for use in the kitchen. They can be used to create gels that are hard, soft, tough, elastic, brittle, hot and so on. We can also explain the crunchy and crispy texture of caramel which technically is classified as a “glass”. And we can also understand why ice cream has such a soft texture. This has to do with the very small size of the solid particles in ice cream (they’re typically < 1/10 mm). And a very nice way of achieving this is by making the ice cream with liquid nitrogen so it freezes very fast.

4) Science helps us understand what flavor is and how we perceive flavor using all our senses. For instance our memory plays an important role when our brain interprets a flavor. Your history of eating will influence how your next meal tastes! Sight is also extremely important. This can easily be demonstrated with some white wine and blue/red food coloring. If an unsuspecting subject is asked to describe “white” white wine and white wine colored with blue and red food coloring the descriptions will probably be typical of a white and red wine. Even if you know your are drinking a red colored white wine it is hard to believe that it is the same wine. The color of plates also influences our perception of flavor, so most people find eating from a blue plate unpleasant. Sound influences how we chew and a crunchy sound actually stops our jaws from closing to fast. If the chewing sound is played back with a 0.5 second delay it is almost impossible to eat! It has also been shown that the beat of music influences how fast guests chew, and apparently there is a restaurant in Australia that utilizes this. It has also long been known that touching sand paper or smooth skin can affect the texture of what we eat.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page

Next up were Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg who presented several of their bestselling books on cooking and flavor, including Culinary Artistry, What to Drink With What you Eat and The Flavor Bible. They made an important point that cooking is the sum of ingredients and technique/preparation. Food science and molecular gastronomy has provided a lot of information on technique, and the example par excellence is Harold McGee’s On food and cooking. However, for ingredients and flavor pairing in particular there hasn’t been any authoritative source available, forcing chefs to cross read a number of cookbooks when looking for new flavors and pairings. It was this realization that motivated them to write Culinary Artistry which is really a thesaurus of classic pairings. I can testify to it’s usefulness – and one example I’ve presented here on the blog are the cherry jams I made with pepper and other spices. Their most recent book, The Flavor Bible, is an updated and expanded edition of Culinary Artistry which includes and reflects the changes in consumer preference in the last decade.

I have emailed a litte with Karen and Andrew previously and got the opportunity to chat with them in the break. – We’re excited to learn about new approaches to flavor pairing, Karen let me know. Andrew added that they hadn’t had the opportunity yet to sample molecularily based food pairings before so they we’re looking forward to try this.

Lorenzo Cerretoni gave a presentation about flavor compounds in olive oil and how they can be paired with Mantis shrimp. After this informative, yet slightly less inspiring talk the Belgian chef Bart de Pooter presented his 4 taste model and how he uses this as a creative approach to create dishes and menus. One concept he promoted was to use ingredients from the same environment. A pheasant for instance walks on grass and eats maize and carrot, so naturally it could also be served together with flavors such as grass, maize and carrot. He also talked about physical and psychic needs and gave a slightly wrong explanation of the flavor pairing hypothesis.

In fact during the whole day there was no proper scientific explanation and discussion of the hypothesis, but Bernard Lahousse – project leader of The Flemish Primitives – did give a popularized version of the hypothesis and an account of how it all started. He explained how the Firmenich scientist François Benzi first stubled across a new way of pairing foods. At one of the Erice meetings he smelled jasmin in a garden and being a flavor scientist knew that this smell was mainly due to indole. Knowing that pork liver also smells of indole he got the idea that jasmine and pork liver might taste nice together – and they did! Bernard did show a picture of a GC-MS and explained how the University of Leuven has been doing food analyses and that only odors with concentrations above the odor thresholds were taken into account. Since he didn’t mention odor activity values (OAV) specifically I asked Bernard about that later and he confirmed that all the data in the food pairing website are now based on odor activity values. Since the first version of the food pairing web site was based on concentration and number of odorants I would expect that this would change some of the pairing charts and Bernard confirmed that this had been the case.

For the event 10 chefs where each given a food product from one of the sponsors. These products were then analyzed and a list of suggested pairings was provided to all the chefs. It should be mentioned that these were top class chefs, but I have to admit that watching chefs cook in real time actually became quite boring after a while, especially since some of the dishes needed seemingly endless steps of preparation. For most of the preparations presented it was also very unclear which of the ingredients used were picked based on the flavor pairing and which were picked by the chef to complete the dish. But the dishes looked absolutely wonderful! Too bad we couldn’t sample them I found two of the dishes particularily interesting (and I think the recipes will be made available on the web). Sang Hoon Degeimbre, chef at L’Air du temps had chosen Leffe beer, but instead of doing a flavor pairing he did a flavor substitution. To achieve this he used several ingredients (shown in the figure below) which when combined would resemble Leffe. In fact he made a dish completely without Leffe that was intented to taste like Leffe – it’s hard to say whether he succeeded or not, but the concept is very interesting! And what warmed the heart of an organic chemist was that Sang Hoon had equipped his kitchen with an erlenmeyer flask and used a glass syringe (looked like a luer lock Hamilton type syringe to me).

Figure from food pairing website. (C) Creax 2008.

The food pairing I found most interesting was the one with Oud Brugge (a cheese), coffee and vanilla. To bind these flavors together chef Gert de Mangeleer from Hertog Jan used potatoes. The surprising element of the dish was the coffee – he sprinkled his dish with freshly ground coffee. The vanilla was applied as a grape seed oil extract of natural vanilla – a nice example of how oil can be used for flavor extraction.

Ben sitting on the stage watching his own video.

- If Einstein had been a chef, he’d probably be like Ben Roche, said presenter Gene Bervoets. Ben is the pastry chef at Homaro Cantu’s Moto restaurant in Chicago – it’s the restaurant where you can chose between a 10 and 20 course menu and then start your meal by eating the menu. Ben’s topic was the Chicago style hot dog and he started off by presenting a mind map of this, resembling the food pairing charts at the food pairing website. Most of his presentation was in fact prerecorded video clips which were really entertaining! His deconstruction/construction of the Chicago style hot dog resulted in a chips & salsa. Evolution of flavor turned the hot dog into pop corn (“less calories than when eating the hot dog”) sprayed with hot dog infused oil and sprinkled with freeze dried garnish. Translation of culture resulted in a Mexican version of “encased meat” using chorizo and a soft taco shell. This dish was also made into a dessert version. Lastly the hot dog was transmogrified into a cartoon dessert version with strawberry sorbet, mint and pistacchios. Hopefully the videos will be made available, but in the mean time you can check out the video of Ben at Taste3.

Although we couldn’t sample the chef’s preparations there a number of tasting samples of different food pairings available in the breaks:

Of these my favorites were the almond thins with mozzarella, fig and ham, and the cooked beef with peanut, chocolate vinagrette and peas. The potato cream was nice, but was a litle overpowered by to much cheese.

Baked beef, cream of peas, peanuts and vinagrette with 70% chocolate

The program session was closed by Albert Adria, younger brother of Ferran Adria. He showed stunning pictures from his coming book natura, accompanied by videos showing how the different elements of the dishes are created. He also showed a short teaser documentary for A day at el Bulli.

Next year’s meeting will be devoted to tools, including one which was presented at the very end of the day with music, ballet dancers and fire works: a reinvention of Ford’s assembly line for mass production of haute cuisine.

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!

Also, Bernard Lahousse (who is in charge of food for design and a co-organizer of the MG smeinar) has let me know that the next seminar will be held on March 16th with the title “A world of Pinot noir” – focus is on wine, but with live MG demos. Stay tuned!