Category fun with food

TGIF: Molecular gastronomy with a twist

Heston Blumenthal was recently featured in “Private Eye”, a british satire magazine (found via Aidan Brooks). They included the following recipe for boiled eggs: A further discussion of boiled eggs from the perspective of molecular gastronomy is found here.

Perfect eggs?

I just came across this fancy egg boiler. It’s designed by Simon Rhymes and bears the name BEM. The egg is cooked in about 6 minutes by the heat from 4 halogen light bulbs with a total output of 500…

Carbonated strawberries

Here’s some pictures of an experiment I did with strawberries and dry ice (solid carbon dioxide). Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide which holds a temperature of -78 °C. What is fascinating is that dry ice does not melt –…

Molecular mixology: Jellied G&T

Wired has a feature on “Better drinking through chemistry”. This includes a recipe for Eben Freeman’s jellied gin and tonic. This was made for Herve This’ molecular mixology masterclas held at the Ritz in Paris (hosted by Bols, more links…

IgNoble prize for food chemistry!

Slightly off topic, but quite amusing: Last night the IgNoble prizes were awarded. Their slogan reads “First it makes you LAUGH, then it makes you THINK”. The 2006 IgNoble prize in chemistry was awarded to a research group studying “Ultrasonic…

Espesso – a thick, lucious espresso foam

Ferran Adria’s espresso foam, named “Espesso”, is indeed a fascinating concoction, created in cooperation with coffee producer Lavazza. The word espesso is a combination of espresso and the Italian word spesso, meaning thick. Just luck at the thick lucious foam.…

Suppression of bitterness

I received an email last week from a supertaster (read more: BBC, Wikipedia) with an interesting question: Certain foods contain bitter substances that only a fraction of the population can taste. Examples include a group of compounds called cucurbitacins, found…

Flavor pairing – try this at home!

If two different foods share one or more volatile molecules, chances are they can taste pretty nice when eaten together. A further discussion of the science behind can be found here. I justed wanted to share a picture of the…