The research project Molecular gastronomy – the scientific study of deliciousness and its physical and chemical basis (Danish homepage) funded by The Danish Research Council was started in 2006. Led by prof. Leif Skibsted people from the Food Chemistry (Jens Risbo, Pia Snitkær Nielsen, Louise Mørch Mortensen) as well as the Sensory Science group (Michael Bom Frøst, Wender Bredie, Per Møller, Line Holler Mielby, Ditte Hartvig) at the Department of Food Science at Copenhagen University have been involved. In addition gastronomic entrepeneur Claus Meyer (noma co-founder) and physics professor Peter Barham (Bristol University) have contributed, as well as the chefs Thorsten Vildgaard (noma/Nordic Food Lab) and Bo Frederiksen (Meyers Madhus). Any of the names sound familiar? They should if you’ve read the recent review published in Chemical Reviews: Molecular Gastronomy: A New Emerging Scientific Discipline where several of the people involved in the project contributed as authors. This landmark paper summarizes and lays out research opportunities in molecular gastronomy, the branch of food science that deals with The art and science of choosing, preparing and eating good food to quote Thorvald Pedersens definition – he is a professor emeritus in chemistry that played an important role helping to establish molecular gastronomy as a research field at the University of Copenhagen.

To mark the end of the project a seminar was organized on March 2nd 2011. The program included the following presentations:

• Reduction of meat stock, what happens? (PhD Pia Snitkjær)
• Flavour pairing (Professor Wender Bredie)
• Chocolate desserts or the importance of phase inversion (PhD student Louise M. Mortensen)
• What’s in a meal? (Associate Professor Michael Bom Frøst)
• Molecular Gastronomy meets the internet (Chemist and food blogger Martin Lersch)
• Molecular Gastronomy – a tool for teaching science (Associate Professor Jens Risbo)
• Food: making science engagement easy (Professor Peter Barham, Bristol University)

As an intermezzo in the program ‘Gastronomisk legestue’ (Gastronomic playroom) presented examples of recent edible works. They are a group of students and young chefs that use the gastronomy teaching lab of the Department of Food Science for gastronomic explorations. I’m very happy I had the opportunity to be present. It  was a very interesting day and I will try to share some impressions with you, so expect blog posts about the seminar and the presentations in the next couple of days. As you can see from the program I was also asked to give a presentation which I will come back to here on the blog in a separate post.

I quote the following from the invitation to the seminar about the purpose of the project:

During the four-year project period we have worked on obtaining a deeper understanding of relationships between products’ physical/chemical characteristics, processes during preparation, and perception of good food. Through experiments in the laboratory, the kitchen, the sensory test room and the restaurant the project has increased the understanding of factors contributing to appreciation of a meal, all the way from choosing the ingredients through preparation to serving and introducing the meal at the dinner table.

An important outcome of the project is the large review of the field: Molecular Gastronomy – a new emerging scientific discipline, which was published in Chemical Reviews in 2010. As a service to the gastronomic society, it can freely be downloaded here.

The goal of the project has been to support inspiration for better foods from gastronomy to science and from science to gastronomy. We strongly believe that working across disciplines, integrating know-how of chefs with the chemical/physical and perceptual/cognitive understanding of food, will contribute to better foods in the future. We believe that our work and future work in this field are important to a positive development of the food sector and our food culture.

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.

I quote the following from the job description:

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

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

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

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

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.