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).

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

A finding in their initial study with 8 pure volatiles smelled alone and in pairs was that the total odor intensity only increased when combining up to 2-3 components. This is in accordance with Fechner’s law which states that it takes a larger difference in physical stimuli to give the same rise difference in perceived intensity. The pleasentness of the individual components decreased when mixed. In a further study they prepared 53 binary mixtures from 19 food odors. The recorded responses were: intensity, pleasantness, complexity, “harmonic” and novelty. They found no real hyper additive effects for intensity – in 91% of the cases the mixture was perceived to be more intense than one compound perceived alone, but less intense than the other (= compromise region of hypo-addition). But turning to pleasantness there were a couple of interesting findings which were presented as the good, the bad and the ugly combinations, based on the pleasantness score from the sensory panel:

The good
lemon peel + butter
cinnamon + apple
ginger + apple
cinnamon + peanut butter
malt + peanut butter
cacao + malt
lemon peel + strawberry

The bad
ginger + blue cheese
caviar + apple
basil + caviar
vanilla + blue cheese
anis seed + basil
basil + green tea
anis seed + caviar

The ugly
cinnamon + blue cheese
anis seed + garlic
cacao + garlic
cinnamon + garlic
malt + blue cheese
caviar + blue cheese
malt + caviar

To test the flavor pairing hypothesis they then took the pairings and analyzed the overlap of volatiles using data from the VCF database. They found absolutely no correlation between the hedonic score of the food pairings and the overlap of volatile flavors! But knowing that many (if not most) of the volatiles compounds found in foods do not contribute to the aroma this is not very surprising. A further interesting test was to evaluate pleasantness as a function of complexity, but the conclusion in short was that one cannot use complexity to predict hedonic response.

Wender concluded that flavor pairing should be the subject of further and more elaborate studies, for instance at lower concentrations (in the so-called hyper additive region where the intensity increases exponentially with increasing concentration). Another approach could be to study sensory (dis)similarity rather than chemical similarity. One could also explore the arousal potential in pairs of dissimilar but liked flavours. He also suggested that one should keep on searching for additive hedonic responses. And he finished his presentation with the following quote:

“Flavour pairing is like painting in the dark… you do not really know what you are creating, but at daylight you may discover that you have moved art beyond imagination”.

I’m really happy that the topic has been brought into the scientific community – and I’m very much looking forward to see the results published. At the same time is has also become very clear to me that the term flavor pairing needs some clarification. I’ll discuss that in a separate post.

The authors of Modernist Cuisine: Maxime Bilet, Chris Young and Nathan Myhrvold

In 2003 Chris Young had an epiphany of a meal at The Fat Duck outside London, and by the end of the meal he knew he had to work with Heston Blumenthal. Things worked out well and after a stage he was hired to build and lead the experimental kitchen at The Fat Duck. In 2007 he returned to Seattle to work with Nathan Myhrvold who at that time was very active on the eGullet forum sharing his research on the sous vide cooking technique. The project that started off as a book on sous vide eventually grew into Modernist Cuisine with 6 volumes spanning more than 2400 pages. After many delays (one being due to Amazon’s drop test which showed that the casing wasn’t sturdy enough for the books totaling 20 kg) Modernist Cuisine is ready for release in March, and will be presented at The Flemish Primitives event in Oostende, Belgium on March 14. That’s one more reason to visit the event!

Martin Lersch: Congratulations with Modernist Cuisine – it is a truly amazing accomlishment! Will you be present in Oostende?

Chris Young: Thank you. Yes, I’m very excited to be present at The Flemish Primitives to talk about our book, Modernist Cuisine, and to share the work of our team with the broader culinary community. I will have pages that I can sign and that Nathan and Max will have already signed.

ML: You studied mathematics and biochemistry, but how and when did your interest in food arise? And what made you want to combine this and approach food from a scientific perspective?

While at University, I came across an interesting book called On Food and Cooking, and it captivated me. Often, when I should have been studying science books, I was instead busy reading my copy of McGee. It made me realize how much I didn’t know about cooking. So I got to work filling in gaps in my knowledge, cooking my way through cookbooks such as Pépin’s La Technique and La Methode. But it was Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook that kept me toiling away into the night perfecting my brunoise, skimming stocks, trussing chickens, braising short ribs, and thinking about becoming a chef.

In the autumn of 2001 I came to the self-realization that spending several more years pursuing a doctoral degree was not in my future. A reasonable question, then, was what should I do? With degrees in biochemistry and mathematics, there was every reason to believe that I was employable. The problem was, however, that I wanted to do something completely different, so I decided to get a job as a cook. Besides, I desperately needed to subsidize my hobby with a job. My grocery bill was getting out of hand! I hesitated only slightly before quitting academic pursuits for a job in a kitchen.

To a lot of my friends, this seemed like a bizarre decision. But for me it was an obvious choice: I had always enjoyed cooking, so I reasoned why not pursue it professionally? I figured that I would become a better cook and make some money at the same time. Well, I was right about the first part anyway. I was lucky to get a job with the talented chef William Belickis at Seattle’s Mistral Restaurant. William took a chance on a me when no one else in town new what to do with a scientist who wanted to become a chef.

But, as I like to tell the story, cooking seems to have been predestined. If my parents are to be believed, my first word was “hot”, uttered after I pulled myself up to the stovetop. As a toddler, my favorite toys were pots and pans. And when I was slightly older, I would attempt recipes from my mother’s encyclopedic set of Time Life’s The Good Cook series of books.

ML: I’ve heard that you had an epiphany of a meal at The Fat Duck outside London, and at the end of the meal you knew that you had to work with Heston. Could you tell me more about that?

The whole story is that at the end of the meal I asked for a stage at The Fat Duck. They said yes, and I returned to England at the beginning of April 2003 and stayed until the end of June 2003. Sometime in April, a newly hired chef failed to return to work, and another chef was scheduled to take a two week vacation. As a result, I ended up working as the garde manger chef. It was a really challenging job, but I loved it. It also gave me a lot of time to interact with Heston during service. He and I just kind of clicked. That June, he asked me if I wanted to move to England permanently and help him open a new kitchen that was focused on developing new ideas and techniques. How do you say no to that kind of offer?!

Getting a work visa turned out to be a bit of a challenge, no one had every tried to get a UK work visa for an experimental chef! So between July of 2003 and June of 2004 I commuted back and forth between Seattle and London. I would do experiments in my kitchen in Seattle and have phone calls with Heston every Sunday morning to discuss the results. Every two or three weeks I would fly to London, land at 7AM, take a taxi straight to the restaurant, and begin work! I would stay for one to two weeks before heading back to Seattle. This has to be some kind of record for commuting to work!

By the summer of 2004 the work permit was sorted out, and I moved to London with my girlfriend (now my wife). Around July of 2004 we opened the experimental kitchen in one of the garden sheds behind the restaurant. About six months later, Heston purchased the Hinds Head pub and I moved the experimental kitchen to a closet in the pub and then later to a house that was purchased with the pub. Located across the street from The Fat Duck, today that house serves as the prep kitchen (downstairs) for The Fat Duck and the experimental kitchen (upstairs). It’s actually a pretty nice kitchen to work in, but when I first moved into the space it was an empty room with broken windows and paint peeling off the walls. You could actually see through the floor into the rooms below!

Over the next 3 years we built up the experimental kitchen and expanded the size of our team as The Fat Duck became successful. For me, it was an amazing opportunity to be part of it from the beginning. I owe Heston a lot for giving me the opportunity to open and run the experimental kitchen, even when he didn’t know how he would pay for it!

ML: In a recent TEDx talk you mentioned that one of the things you learnt from Heston Blumenthal was what a talented cook can accomplish when enabled by science in the kitchen. Is it possible for a chef to really excel today without some scientific backing or a co-operation with a scientist?

Certainly it is possible for chefs to ignore science and still cook great food. Indeed, this is how we’ve cooked for most of history, and we humans have produced some pretty delicious food over the centuries. For me, the reason to be a scientifically-minded cook is for the creative possibilities it brings to the kitchen. Understanding the how’s and why’s of cooking inspires me to be a better chef; it gives me insights into cooking that help me make more delicious and satisfying food.

ML: How did you get in contact with Nathan Myhrvold?

The Fat Duck was where I met my co-author Nathan Myhrvold when he came for dinner. Because he lived in Seattle, and since I was more or less from Seattle too, we stayed in touch. We often exchanged ideas about Modernist barbecue-we’re both very passionate about great bbq-and other Modernist techniques. I would visit him whenever I was in Seattle. In July of 2007, I was thinking about leaving The Fat Duck. My son Jack had been born in April and my wife and I wanted to be a closer to home. I sent Nathan a friendly email telling him that I would be leaving The Fat Duck and that if he wanted to keep in touch he should use a different email address. Three minutes later, I received the following email:

> From: Nathan Myhrvold
> Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007
> To: chris@thefatduck.co.uk
> Subject: Crazy Idea
>
> Why don’t you come work for me?
>
> Nathan

Later, Nathan told me about the book he had started working on and that I really should move back to Seattle and help him write it. It wasn’t a very hard choice, because even then I knew that this was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

ML: Moving from The Fat Duck to Seattle and working with Modernist Cuisine, what was the biggest change?

One of the biggest challenges for me was writing everyday, rather than cooking. Cooking, with the goal of doing something new everyday, was something that I was comfortable with when I started this book. The writing, however, was a new challenge. Nathan and I really wanted to explain the how’s and why’s of Modernist cooking in a very approachable way; at the same time, we felt that we should not dumb down the relevant scientific concepts. This meant that we had to work very hard at explaining topics as clearly as possible, but in a way that wasn’t boring or irrelevant for a cook. We’ll find out if we succeeded!

ML: A couple of excerpts from the book have been published on the Modernist cuisine website and I must say that I’m stunned by the photographs. At what point during the project was it decided to move on from the ubiquitous black and white to a fully fledged art book?

Modernist Cuisine was never envisioned as being a black and white book. From the beginning, our entire team believed that this should be a no compromise book. We believed that the combination of beautiful photography, great writing, and clearly explained techniques and recipes would make this a unique cookbook that would capture people’s interest.

I will say that back in 2007, when I first started work with Nathan, we thought the book would be a bit smaller-perhaps only 400 pages!

ML: If I may paraphrase Sir Benjamin Thompson (aka Count Rumford), Which discovery in Modernist Cuisine will most powerfully contribute to increase the comforts and enjoyments of mankind?

Actually, I have no idea. This is one of the more intimidating things as an author, I have no idea how people will respond to Modernist Cuisine. I will be as interested as you are to see what ideas and techniques people gravitate towards. But more fascinating than what is in the book now, are the things we will discover need to be put into the next edition? So I suppose that the powerful contribution I hope our book will make is to inspire cooks and chefs to keep innovating and, thus, come up with ideas and techniques that are unknown today.

ML: With more than 2400 pages Modernist Cuisine takes a comprehensive approach to cooking. But in my R&D day time job I often find myself in the position that the more I know about something, the more questions I have. In which areas have you only yet scratched the surface?

Every chapter in our book could have been a lot longer. We tried to make sure we covered the most important points for each of the subjects we covered, but there were a lot of hard choices about what to leave out. At 2400 pages we obviously kept a lot in, but as you say, the more we researched a topic the more there was to know. That’s one of the great things about both science and cooking, there is no end to how far you can explore.

ML: For a student interested in modernist cuisine and molecular gastronomy, what would be good topics to dig into? Where are the white areas on the map?

I really think that we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what’s really going on in the kitchen. So my advice to anyone would be to dig into the topics that interest you the most. Hopefully we’ll have given you a good idea of where to start looking, but you’ll quickly discover how much room there is to innovate. Very simply, terra incognito in the kitchen is lurking just about everywhere you choose to look.

ML: A majority of the papers published in food science journals deal with food safety, health issues, storage stability, etc. Are the practical questions that arise in cooking or eating not scientific enough for scientists to spend time (and money) on researching them? Or to put it differently – is the pleasure of eating still not a good enough reason for governmental money spending?

I think the unfortunate thing is that traditional scientists generally need funding to undertake their investigations, and, generally, the economic resources haven’t been available to enable them to explore the science behind the pleasures of eating. This was always something that saddened Nicholas Kurti, the renowned physicist who coined the phrase “molecular gastronomy” in an attempt to convince others that the pleasures of the table was a subject worthy of scientific research. Although Nicholas’ efforts certainly inspired chefs such as Heston Blumenthal and food writers like Harold McGee, it hasn’t changed the fact that most gastronomical research done by bonafide scientists has been done on their own time simply because they happen to be passionate about food and cooking.

ML: Sadly there have been no follow ups of the 2004 “International workshop on molecular gastronomy” in Erice. Do you see the need for such a meeting place today where scientists, writers, journalists, chefs and food enthusiasts can meet, eat and discuss in a truly creative and enthusiastic atmosphere? Are there any such meeting places today?

One of my personal regrets is that I was never able to attend one of the Erice conferences. It would be wonderful if someone could create an event that would bring together great chefs and scientists and foster collaboration between these two groups. Sadly, I don’t know of anything quite like this happening today.

ML: How does working at The Fat Duck and with Modernist Cuisine influence your home cooking when you opt for “comfort food”? What kind of dishes would you prepare?

Once upon a time I loved cooking elaborate, time consuming dishes at home. That’s kind of my day job now. So when I have the opportunity to cook for my family or for friends at my home I gravitate towards simple, but delicious things. In the summer I might barbecue ribs on a Sunday, in the winter it might be roasting a chicken or preparing a pot roast of pork. On the other hand, I have been known to do things a little differently in my kitchen than my neighbors-I do keep some liquid nitrogen around, which I use for everything from ice cream to preparing some pretty fantastic smoked ribs.

ML: Harold McGee has recently condensed his cooking experience into “Keys to good cooking”. It gives readers all the practical hints and tips for cooking. To what extent does Modernist Cuisine include practical hints and tips that chefs can use right away in the kitchen?

One of the design features of Modernist Cuisine are margin notes. We used these frequently to include bits of information that didn’t quite fit in the text and also as a way to include lots of practical cooking tips. An example of additional information is this margin note that shows up in one of our plated dish recipes for a beef rib eye:

Rib eye is not one muscle but three: loin (the eye), the deckle (cap), and the relatively unknown, but tender and delicious spinalus dorsi (see page TK). Many cooks know that the deckle is extra juicy and tender. This muscle is actually part of the deep pectoral muscle that is constantly exercised in life by breathing. This makes for a very tender, finely grained muscle (see page TK on why a well-exercised endurance muscle can be more tender). Unfortunately, because it sits on the outside of the roast, it is often overcooked. So it’s best to remove this muscle and cook it separately.

Some of these tips are things that a chef on our team discovered while working on a technique or recipe. For example, in our section on tofus, we have a margin note that explains that an alternative way to quickly make silken tofu is by hydrating 0.2% iota carrageenan and 0.1% kappa carrageenan in soy milk at 85 °C / 185 °F and then chilling it to set.

Some tips help explain how to use part of a recipe or technique in different situations, such as adapting a Russian-style smoked salmon to a Lox-style preparation by slightly modifying the cure.

We used margin notes liberally throughout the book, and we tried to include them with most recipes. In part, this was because we wanted to give people a reason to take the time to read through the recipes, even if they would never attempt a particular recipe because it seems too elaborate.

ML:I have no formal cooking education but I love to cook, and I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Modernist Cuisine. What in Modernist Cuisine do you think will be of greatest interest for the amateurs cooks?

I also started as an amateur cook, with no “formal” training. Modernist Cuisine is the book that I wish had existed when I became passionate and serious about my cooking in the late 1990s. So in that sense, Modernist Cuisine has a tremendous amount to offer any one who is enthusiastic about cooking.

Our book is not just about elaborate recipes prepared with exotic equipment, indeed much of what we cover can be done by anyone in their own kitchen with very little in the way of equipment. To me, the real value of Modernist Cuisine will be its ability to broaden and deepen a reader’s insight into the why’s and how’s behind techniques and recipes. Fundamentally, I believe that by explaining basic scientific principles that govern both traditional and Modernist cooking in a understandable and practical way will be the key to giving cooks greater creativity in the kitchen, regardless of what type of food they are interested in.

The Modernist Cuisine cooking lab in Seattle. Want more? Check out this 26-minute video tour.

ML: If you were to recommend three pieces of equipment/kitchen gear which each cost less than $500 to an amateur cook, what would they be?

First things first, you absolutely should have a good digital thermometer and scale. The thermometer should be accurate to at least 0.5°C (just because a thermometer will display a tenth of a degree doesn’t mean that it is accurate to a tenth of a degree) and the scale should be accurate to at least 0.5g, although 0.1g would be much better (but will obviously cost more). These two tools are as fundamental to me as a knife. Beyond these, I think a pressure cooker is a must. I use them for everything from stocks and sauces, to quickly transforming tough cuts of meat and plant foods into succulent dishes. A pressure cooker is not only a time saver in the kitchen, but can do delicious things that are simply impossible by other means of cooking.

ML: On an art-science axis, where is high-end cooking today? And where do you think it will be in the future?

Actually, this question presumes that art and science are independent of one another, which is something I personally disagree with. To me, science and art are both ways of exploring ideas, and new ideas are the currency of both scientists and artists. The confusion comes because people who have avoided science, or only experienced it in the boring environment of the classroom associate science with facts and structure, whereas they associate art with creativity and whimsy; but actually you need to be very creative as a scientist.

One of the joys I get from my work are applying both the scientist and the chef aspects of my personality. At face value it might seem like these methods of thought are at odds, but really they combine to be the catalyst of doing innovative work in the kitchen. Fundamentally, I believe all chefs are scientists at some level. It’s just a fundamental part of cooking. Anyone preparing a dish is conducting an experiment, which makes them a scientist in my view.

ML: With Modernist Cuisine hitting the shelves next month, is this it, or will there be a sequel?

Well, right now I’m travelling a lot to promote the book, as are Nathan and Max. But certainly there are a lot more areas of cooking that we’re interested in exploring. So, yes, there could be another book. But we’d like to see what people think of this one first.

ML: Chris, thank you very much for fitting this interview into your busy schedule!

Further reading: You can pre-order your copy of Modernist cuisine and while you wait for the books to arrive you can visit their website and blog for more information.

Sous Vide for the home cook (already available)
by Douglas Baldwin

Long time followers of Khymos will remember Douglas Baldwin whom I interviewed in 2009. Furthermore he is the author of the perhaps best paper on sous vide cooking to appear so far. The present book Sous Vide for the home cook has been written specially for the company Eades (who makes the SousVide Supreme temperature controlled water bath – the first mass produced integrated sous vide solution targetet at the consumer market!), but the book is so general that it can be used with whatever sous vide setup you have, be it an expensive immersion circulator or a cheap beer cooler. Douglas let me read through one of the drafts to the book, and this is really the book to chose if you’re not interested in the science of sous vide. It’s got many recipes (although many of the sous vides recipes are duplicated by addition of many different sauces), but there were no pictures in early drafts that I saw.

Everything But Espresso: Professional Coffee Brewing Techniques (already available)
by Scott Rao

A while ago I picked up Scott Rao’s espresso handbook The Professional Barista’s Handbook: An Expert Guide to Preparing Espresso, Coffee, and Tea. This book explains everything you want to know about brewing espressos and steaming milk in text as well as excellent full color pictures (and the book even has chapters on drip coffee, French press and tea brewing as well). Together with Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques by David Schomer these are the reference books on espresso brewing. It was therefore great to see that Scott Rao has recently written a book which is devoted to all the non-espresso coffee brewing techniques out there such as manual and automatic drip coffee, French press, steep & release and vacuum pot/siphon. There are also chapters on bean storage, grinding as well as some basic water chemistry.

Coffee with Tim Wendelboe
by Tim Wendelboe

While writing about coffee books there’s no way around Tim Wendelboe’s book on coffee which finally is available in English. I must admit that I have only leafed through the Norwegian version of the book and it’s certainly on my wish list. The book is intended for a broad coffee loving audience – no knowledge of science is required! Tim Wendelboe is a Norwegian coffee pioneer and award winning barista, and it was great fun visiting his shop to do the tests with salt and coffee. As of now it seems that the book is only available from Wendelboe’s webshop.

In Search of Total Perfection (already available)
by Heston Blumenthal

This is a soft cover book combining Heston Blumenthal’s previous books In Search of Perfection and Further Adventures in Search of Perfection: Reinventing Kitchen Classics. If you own these, don’t get this book – if not, this new book is cheaper than bying the books separately. The dishes that Heston investigates in great detail are: fish and chips, roast chicken, spaghetti bolognese, steak and salad, pizza, sausages and mashed potatoes, black forest cake, treacle tart and ice cream, trifle, baked Alaska, fish pie, hamburger, Peking duck, chicken tikka masala, risotto and chilli con carne. Each dish was also featured in the BBC series that came along with the books (or was it the other way around?). To get an idea of the style and detail level, check out video clips from the series over at Youtube.

Heston Blumenthal: The Biography of the World’s Most Brilliant Master Chef (available)
by Chas Newkey-Burden

The first part of The Big Fat Duck Cookbook retraces the beginnings of the restaurant and is in a sense autobiographical, but here’s the full story of Heston Blumenthal – a self-taught chef who turned the world of gastronomy and high end cooking on its head.

Cooking Sous Vide: A guide for the Home Cook (available)
by Jason Logsdon

The author is the co-founder and main contributor to the website Cooking sous vide which has become a relatively large collection of sous vide related articles. There is also a blog where Jason keeps track of developments related to equipment and other sous vide information on the web. If you’re totally new to sous vide the book could be a good place to start, although I’d recommend you to take a look at what’s available on the website first.

Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food (to appear August 3rd)
by Jeff Potter

Don’t let the tongue-in-cheek title make you skip this book. It covers kitchen gadgets, hydrocolloids, sous vide, protein denaturation, Maillard reactions and caramelization – too name a few. But what makes this book different from the rest is it’s style and language (ever heard about overclocking an oven to make it hot enough for pizza?) as well as the personal approach with a number of interviews with food experts including Hervé This and Harold McGee. And guess what – there’s even an interview with me in the book (even though I definitely don’t belong in the same food expert category as This and McGee…). You can find more information on the Cooking for geeks web site.

Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food With Wine (to appear September 28th)
by Francois Chartier

I blogged about this book as it appeared in French in 2009. It’s written by Canadian sommelier François Chartier (he has an extensive website). Basically what he does it to apply 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 pairing suggestions based on this. For instance lamb’s characteristic flavour comes from thymol, an aromatic compound found in the oil of, yes, thyme. This flavour note is also associated with red wines from the southern Languedoc region of France, such as Minervois, Corbières or St. Chinian. Chartier suggests that it may be well worth trying one of these in stead of the more obvious red Bordeaux.

Heston’s Fantastical Feasts (to appear September 28th)
by Heston Blumenthal

In a British television series in 2009 Heston Blumenthal set of to prepare six feasts inspired by history, literature and legend: a Willy Wonka Feast, a Fairy Tale Feast, an Edwardian Feast, a Gothic Feast, a ’70s Feast, and a Feast of the Future. From the publisher: “Delving deep into the world of each dish, Blumenthal creates poison apples, transforms pumpkins into carriages, and builds Edwardian gingerbread houses with sugar windows. Scouring Italy for rare mushrooms and Switzerland for wild boar, he records the journeys and inspiration behind each meal, laying it all out in grandly illustrated detail. Witness his delectable riffs on Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham and Roald Dahl’s Lickable Wallpaper, and even try the recipe if you dare.”

NOMA (to appear October 6th)
by Réne Redzepi

The restaurant Noma was founded by Réne Redzepi and Claus Meyer, and was voted Best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2010. This alone should probably be a good enough reason to get the book, but there’s more: Claus Meyer was appointed adjunct professor of molecular gastronomy at The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Copenhagen in 2006 (today part of University of Copenhagen). Back in 2004 he established a molecular gastronomy study group in cooperation with Thorvald Pedersen, a Danish chemist and life long food chemistry/molecular gastronomy enthusiast. And he still works together with the Danish scientists who recently co-authored a major review on molecular gastronomy with Peter Barham. Even though NOMA is authored by Réne Redzepi alone, I find his cooperation with Claus Meyer and the link to molecular gastronomy and the Danish scientists quite interesting.

Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (to appear October 28th)
by Harold McGee

In a mini Q&A with NY Times in 2008 Harold McGee said the following about this book: “I’ve heard from many cooks that while they value the scope and depth of “On Food & Cooking,” when they need practical help with a specific technique or ingredient it’s often hard for them to locate the information. So my next book will be nothing but practical information and directions, concise and brief.”

Modernist Cuisine (to appear December 1st)
by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet

With 2200 pages spanning 5 volumes this will be the reference work on modern cooking for years to come. Nathan Myhrvold has had a team of 20+ people working in his labs. Watch this 26 min video of the labs to get an impression of the work they’re been doing there. I’ve the book previously here and here.

Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work (to appear December 28th)
by Aki Kamozawa and Alexander H. Talbot

The food blogging couple Aki Kamozawa and Alexander H. Talbot have taken the step into the printed world. Through their blog they have taken a tremendously open and sharing approach, blogging about their ideas, inspiration and creativity – even long before they turn into specific dishes. And always accompanied by very nice photos. Not much information is available about the book yet, but I will update as soon as I find more. The title suggests that it’s style may be a bit similar to Hervé This’ book Révelations gastronomiques (no English translation yet that I’m aware of, but it’s available in German as Kulinarische Geheimnisse – it’s basically a compilation of 55 recipes with scientific explanations inbetween the recipe directions).

So to sum it up, the list of interesting books for 2010 is as follows:

Sous Vide for the home cook
Everything But Espresso: Professional Coffee Brewing Techniques
Coffee with Tim Wendelboe
In Search of Total Perfection
Heston Blumenthal: The Biography of the World’s Most Brilliant Master Chef
Cooking Sous Vide: A guide for the Home Cook
Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food (to appear August 3rd)
Heston’s Fantastical Feasts (to appear September 28th)
NOMA (to appear October 6th)
Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes (to appear October 28th)
Modernist Cuisine (to appear December 1st)
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work (to appear December 28th)

Any books I forgot to mention? I will update the list as new books appear.

Last year’s book bonanza (Remember The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, Alinea and Under pressure right? Not to mention BakeWise, The Flavor Bible (not science, but I love their systematic approach), Cooking – The Quintessential Art, A day at el Bulli, the bilingual Sous-Vide, the German Verwegen Kochen and the Danish Molekylær gastronomi – did I miss any?) will be difficult to beat, but several interesting books will appear this fall as well. It’s as if this field is exploding with books now. When I first set up the webpages which later evolved into Khymos only a handful of books were available (you can travel back in time and view the single page from 2003 – only in Norwegian, sorry), but even I have a hard time now keeping track with all the books which cover the interesting intersection between cooking and science, aka molecular gastronomy. Sometimes I think – is this book really necessary? Do we need it? What does it add? But addicted as I am, I can’t help it – so I’ll probably get hold of most of these books as they become available

Hervé This is a pionéer of molecular gastronomy and has an impressive publication list in French. Fortunately more and more of his books are now becomming available in English as well. In recent years we have seen Building a meal, Cooking – The Quintessential Art, Kitchen mysteries – Revealing the science of food and Molecular gastronomy: Exploring the science of flavor. His latest book The Science of the Oven is scheduled to appear in September/October. According to the publisher Hervé This unravels “the science behind common culinary technique and practice” and “translates the complex processes of the oven into everyday knowledge for professional chefs and casual cooks; demystifies the meaning of taste and the making of flavor; describes the properties of liquids, salts, sugars, oils, and fats; and defines the principles of culinary practice, which endow food with sensual as well as nutritional value”. As usual I haven’t been able to identify the original title in French, maybe someone can help?

For the first time ever, every single dish served at elBulli has been collected in a single book. The book Food for tought: Thought for food explores the creativity of Ferran Adria and his team and features a ” lively dialogue between the most potent critics and creators of the art and gastronomic worlds, including Heston Blumenthal, Bill Burford, Jerry Saltz, Massmiliano Gioni, Anya Gallaccio, Peter Kubelka, Antoni Miralda, Carsten Holler, Bice Curiger, Adrian Searle, Davide Paolini”. -Professionally, I can die after this book, says Ferran Adria. In case you wondered about the cover drawing – yes it’s Ferran Adria drawn by Simpson creator Matt Groening. (If you’re not famous enough to have him portray you check out the website simpsonizeme in stead.)

The no-knead bread has been a craze on the internet since the 2006 article in NY Times. From a chemical perspective two things are particularily interesting about this bread. First, by using a wetter dough the mobility of glutenin and gliadin increases, allowing sufficient gluten to form without kneading. Second, by baking the bread in a preheated pot with a closed lid one emulates the effect of a professional steam oven – the higher humidity gives a more efficient heat transfer, better crust formation and ensures a proper oven spring. There are several other books which ride the wave of “no-knead artisan breads”, but it’s probably worth lending an ear to Jim Lahey who (to the best of my knowledge) pioneered this. His book My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method is scheduled for release in October.

When reading up on sourdougs I was a little disappointed by The bread bible (but what more is to expect when one of the best books I’ve found on the subject is the much more technical-not-for-the-general-audience Handbook of dough fermentations by CRC?). However, the books by Peter Reinhart have been more rewarding. I own Crust and crumb and I’ve learnt a couple of things from that book. As the title of his latest books suggests, Artisan breads every day, Reinhart incorporates the latest no-knead, no-fuzz trend in this book. The publisher promises that the book will teach you how to bake the “highest quality loaves”, and I’m quite sure you will if you follow the recipes carefully. But that you’ll be able to do so “in a fast and convenient fashion” is perhaps a little too optimistic. When did artisan breads become fast and convenient?

As the title of Modern Gastronomy: A to Z by Ferran Adria suggests, the book has a lexical format and covers the terminology used to describe “the nature of ingredients and why these ingredients produce certain reactions”. It’s written in plain language and even claims to teach the readers “everything they need to know about the science of cooking”. I seriously doubt that claim, but the book is probably quite useful anyway as a starting point and a handy reference guide. And one more thing – it’s published by CRC, a publisher that normally addresses a professional audience. Too me it suggests that the book is quite different from The Science of Good Food: The Ultimate Reference on How Cooking Works (which is OK, but not superb).

And finally, for those who didn’t fork out a fortune to buy Heston Blumenthal’s monumental The Big Fat Duck Cookbook last year, now is your chance to buy a cheaper version of the same book! Seriously – if you’re only buying one book this year, get this one. You get the complete content of the book that was published last year, minus the luxurious box, silver edged pages, colored ribbons and a couple of pounds! The book is in fact three books in one – you get an autobiography of Heston and the history of The Fat Duck, you get 50 signature recipes and in the third section a number of essays on the science behind it all.

I think I’ve covered the most relevant “sciency” foodbooks appearing this fall, but feel free to fill me inn if there are books I have overlooked.

Molecular gastronomy was recently chosen as word of the month (not quite sure exactly which month this was). They give the following definition:

the art and practice of cooking food using scientific methods to create new or unusual dishes

This is not the best definition I’ve seen, to be honest. Why should one limit it to new or unusual dishes? When taken to extremes this only results in gimmickery. Strangely enough there are no hits when I search for “molecular gastronomy” at www.askoxford.com, so one might wonder whether they changed their mind? Personally I feel that molecular gastronomy should strive to improve both home cooking and restaurant cooking. That’s also what I tried to convey with my 10-part series with tips for practical molecular gastronomy.

The Webster’s New Millennium dictionary has this definition:

the application or study of scientific principles and practices in cooking and food preparation

This definition includes both the fundamental scientific aspects and the applications of these. But to me it’s too close to “food science”. Where is the enthusiasm? Where is the delicous meal with tempting aromas and textures? As you might know several definitions have been launched over the last couple of years. My favorite definition is still Harold McGee’s (although he does no longer use the definition himself): “Molecular gastronomy is the scientific study of deliciousness”. In my opinion it joins the two worlds which for too long have been separated – the world of science and the world of gastronomy and everything delicious.

It was a German blog post by Benedikt Köhler over at molekularküche (German blog on molecular gastronomy) that made me aware of the Oxford dictionary definition, and he also reminded me of the hype cycle, a term coined by the US based analyst house Gartner (read more about it in the book “Mastering the hype cycle”). It features the following 5 phases shown below and I agree with Benedikt that these terms can also be applied to the rise and fall (and hopefully also resurrection) of molecular gastronomy:

1. Technology Trigger
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations
3. Trough of Disillusionment
4. Slope of Enlightenment
5. Plateau of Productivity

Phase one started as the term was first used in the 80′s, and I guess it all peaked sometime between 2004 and 2006 with chefs all over wanting to cook with liquid nitrogen and other fancy stuff. Then, with the statement on new cookery by Adria, Blumenthal, Keller and McGee and Heston’s declaration that “molecular gastronomy is dead” we had clearly reached the trough of disillusionment. Today however we’re past that point.

Hype cycle (Concept copyright by Gartner, diagram by Jeremy Kemp under CC-SA).

Benedikt Köhler writes that we’re now on our way to the slope of enlightenment, and personally I think we might’ve reached the fifth phase already, the plateau of productivity. Molecular gastronomy is a term that will live on for years to come, only to disappear as the results and ways of thinking become so common that they’re simply referred to as “cooking” and the result as “really good food” (to quote Michael Ruhlman).

As you might have noticed I’ve decided to stick with one term – molecular gastronomy – for both the scientific, technological and practical parts of “science enabled cooking” (a term Harold McGee uses in The Fat Duck Cookbook – I think that’s a good term). Just like the word “chemistry” is used to describe fundamental research and technological applications I can’t see why the applications of molecular gastronomy (i.e. the food) should be given a different name than the fundamental scientific studies. Some (including Hervé This) have proposed terms such as molecular cuisine or molecular cooking to cover all the practical aspects in order to reserve molecular gastronomy for the “pure science”. There was a debate last year in August on the molecular gastronomy mailing list and Hervé This participated and defended his viewpoint (as he also does in a recent blog post). I actually didn’t take part in the discussion as I had a pretty long private email discussion with Hervé back in 2007 following the EuroFoodChem XIV conference. The conclusion was that we disagree.

I don’t think we should ditch molecular gastronomy, just because it was hyped. But I suggest that we use it to describe more than foams, alginate spheres and liquid nitrogen ice cream. Do you agree?

To the music of Queen’s “We will rock you” Heston Blumenthal (HB) entered the stage, welcomed by Gene Bervoets (GB) and Bernard Lahousse (BL). Heston started of by telling about his childhood and how Britain in the 60′s was not the place to go for food. You could only get olive oil at the chemist’s because it was not used for consumption! Heston basically grew up without experiencing anything related to gastronomy. However this all changed at the age of 15 when he went to France for a holiday with his familiy. A visit to a Michelin restaurant was to become a decisive moment for Heston. He described it as if it were yeasterday – the sound of the waiters walking on gravels, the lavender smell, how they carved legs of lamb – the whole atmosphere. It was also the first time ever he tasted oysters. He felt a little like Alice in wonderland.

At The Fat Duck, what Heston is essentially trying to do is recreate this restaurant experience with food. When he opened The Fat Duck it was in fact his first paid job, and quite surprisingly he is a self taught chef (with a few exceptions as he has worked a short time for two other chefs). He even helped out when they were renovating the house were The Fat Duck was to be located. Quite amusingly he told about a lady who lived nearby. She let him know that “We’ve had 5 owners in 3 years. We’ve closed closed them all down. We’re gonna close you down as well!“. And even the city council wrote a letter, letting Heston know that they felt the name “Fat Duck” was not suitable – they were afraid people might mix up the F and the D.

GB: Culinary experience is emotions for you?
HB: Yes. Think about your most memorable meal. The food was good, but probably it was the whole setting. Never forget the fact that eating is about gathering together around a table.

GB: What is food pairing for you?
HB: Taste happens in the mouth, aroma is picked up by the nose and in our brain this is all combined. Flavor actually happens in the brain. You can compare it with watching a movie at a cinema. You see the picture and hear the sound – and then it’s all combined in the brain. An important point is that this is the most exciting time in gastronomy ever. There is a openness among chefs. And I think everyone has a duty to give something back to the rest of the community. A couple of years ago I bougth the VCF package. I checked up mandarin and found that it contained neryl acetate, which could also be found in bergamot, ginger, eucalyptus and chocolate. This compound in pure form smelled a little like all of them, and from here I could start creating a dish. Food pairing is a catalyst for creativity.

Being questioned about his intereste in psychology Heston mentioned a study where the sound of chewing was recored and played back with a 0.5 s time delay to the person chewing. This makes it very difficult to chew normally, and by adjusting the volume down one can make crisps taste stale. Inspired by this Heston got the idea to use sound in combination with a dish (and he actually serves a dish which is accompanied by “sounds of the sea” on an ipod which is served together with the food).

Apart from the contact with Peter Barham, Heston has worked with a great number of scientists including Charles Spence (“eating with head phones” experiments), Andy Taylor, Don Mottram and Margot Gosney. He even recently co-authored a scientific paper on differences of umami taste in flesh and pulp of tomates and holds a honorary doctorate at the University of Reading. That’s quite uncommon for a self taught chef, not to mention his OBE! It is also worth mentioning that Heston co-sponsored Rachel Edwards-Stuart’s PhD on methyl cellulose (video interview). Today The Fat Duck has it’s own development kitchen. I had a short talk with Kyle Connaughton who is in charge of this and he let me know that they are 6 people and that some of these have a science background.

Apart from science and psychology, Heston is also interested in how the arts can be used. He has for instance worked with a magician and he hopes to include something inspired by this in the menu. He imagines that it would be very amusing to ask the guests if they want still or sparkling water, and then be able to serve both from the same bottle. And he hopes to create a menu one day in co-operation with someone who writes movie scripts.

In response to people who feel Heston’s cooking relies to much on technology he gave several examples of “normal” kitchen devices which were also new and exotic at some point in time. When electricity first came it was ground breaking, and a lemon juicer made out of glas has also been novel at some point. Heston feels that lab grade equipment should be embraced like all the other technologies and techniques that have entered the kitchen. The important thing is what you do with the technology.

There was a question from the audience if all the mimicking could actually beat the real thing (with reference to how Heston tries to recreate for instance his first Michelin experience. Heston replied by refering to research on how the way an oyster is served can influence the perceived saltiness. Again – the most important thing is how this is used in the restaurant setting. Bernard Lahousse was given the final question:

BL: How will flavor pairing evolve?
HB: As more people do it, it will start to snowball. It’s also a confidence issue. You need confidence to be adventureous!

I got to chat with Heston after his presentation, and he did remember me from the Erice meeting in 2004 where we met the first time

Related posts:
Searching for flavor pairings
They go really well together (food blogging event)
The Big Fat Duck Cookbook

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.

I’ve blogged about the upcoming food pairing seminar in Belgium on January 5th previously, but there are a couple of important additions to the programme: Albert Adrià (El Bulli, Spain) and Ben Roche (Moto, USA) will also participate. Given the extensive list of other chefs and notabilities within the realms of molecular gastronomy and science inspired cooking that will be present, this is definitely the place to be on January 5th. Registering is online, and the early bid registration fee is €245 (rises to €295 from November 16th). More information is available from the website (also in html format).

I recently blogged about the Alinea cookbook, and then in a Q&A with both Grant Achatz and Heston Blumenthal I discovered that there is another great cook book coming up this fall: The Big Fat Duck Cookbook! It’s quite amazing that these two books will be released within weeks of each other this fall.

This is what the publisher promises us:

In the first section of The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, we learn the history of the restaurant, from its humble beginnings to its third Michelin star (the day Heston received the news of this he had been wondering how exactly he would be able to pay his staff that month). Next we meet 50 of his signature recipes – sardine on toast sorbet, salmon poached with liquorice, hot and iced tea, chocolate wine – which, while challenging for anyone not equipped with ice baths, dehydrators, vacuum pumps and nitrogen on tap, will inspire home cooks and chefs alike. Finally, we hear from the experts whose scientific know-how has contributed to Heston’s topsy-turvy world, on subjects as diverse as synaesthesia, creaminess and flavour expectation.

With an introduction by Harold McGee, incredible colour photographs throughout, illustrations by Dave McKean, multiple ribbons, real cloth binding and a gorgeous slip case, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is not only the nearest thing to an autobiography from the world’s most fascinating chef, but also a stunning, colourful and joyous work of art.

Compared to the Alinea cookbook this one is one is more expensive and has fewer recipes. But hey – who buys cookbooks based on the price/recipe anyway?