A chef should use his fingers and his tongue—not a test tube. —Gordon Ramsay
I just don’t get it. What does it mean? Does it make food taste any better? —Marco Pierre White
The concept of molecular gastronomy, a style of cooking made famous lately by a group of notable chefs around the world, seems to divide most professionals (and probably everyone who knows enough about cooking to actually recognize the term) in two main camps: those who embrace it as a new, revolutionary method of exploring new ways to handle and combine ingredients to create never before experienced tastes and textures; and those who regard it but pretentious marketing ploy whose only motivation was to attract column inches from the very beginning.
Waiter! There’s a snail in my porridge!
Certainly, some of the dishes dreamt up by this new breed of chefs armed with not only pots, pans and knives but also with centuries of scientific knowledge and equipment normally more at home in laboratories and hardware stores can seem unappetizing on the menu. Snail porridge? Bacon ice cream accompanied by nitro scrambled egg and tea jelly? These are a few of the famous items you might have tasted if you’ve visited Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in Bray, UK.
No wonder many famous chefs object the very term molecular gastronomy—some of whom are, in fact, regarded as leaders in the field. Grant Achatz of the famous Alinea, Chicago, said in an interview (Kauppalehti Optio 2006) he wants nothing to do with the genre (unlike his colleague Homaro Cantu, Moto, Chicago). Yet he’s considered a major molecular influence.
This might sound familiar to anyone who’s ever observed a rock band come up with a new style, get a huge following, release a number one album or two, then the copycats come in herds, and finally the band that started it all loudly resign from the genre and argue they never actually had anything to do with it. Nobody wants to be categorized. And certainly a cartoon image of a chef slicing vegetables and hams is more likely to make your mouth water than a snapshot of a scientist armed with goggles and test tubes with a mad grin on their face.
Yet taste, texture and appearance, the molecular chefs argue, are what matters. Indeed, anybody who’s ever cooked anything, even if they’ve actually made a conscious decision of which knive to use to cut a tomato, has applied molecular gastronomy. Even more so, if they’ve used eggs for omelettes, pastries or mayonnaise. Sabayon (or zabaglione) is hardcore molecular gastronomy: you need an exactly the right amount of not only egg and sweet wine but sugar as well. Otherwise you won’t end up with a sauce with the right texture or the right texture that lasts until the dish has been consumed.
Which came first, the eggs or the phospholipids?
Then again liquid nitrogen and powdered algae extracts aren’t exactly everyday cooking. There comes a time when a determined future chef starts making his own stocks and wondering why meat gets sold vacuum-packed and ready-marinated. Anyone can try cooking meats at low temperatures for hours or even days; anyone can measure their ingredients exactly to the gram—no special equipment needed, an oven and a cheap digital scale will do, and you can feel you’re right up there with Pierre Gagnaire and Ferran Adrià. And one characteristic of all three star chefs is wanting to prepare everything from ground up.
But how do you extract anything from seaweed? Where does calcium chloride come from? Granted, you cannot create eggs in your kitchen (although Heston has probably at least thought about it) but it should not present a problem for anyone to extract them from hens, three stars or not. Today we all handily utilize our microwave ovens and blenders, but how common will vacuum sealers and thermostated water bath circulators be even twenty years from now?
Still, some believe that the dishes and techniques created under the new molecular movement has affected the way cooking is done forever. And whatever you think about it, there is a hundred ways you can use knowledge like this tidbit Hervé This shares with us: salt does not dissolve in oil. Pierre Gagnaire does: he used to sprinkle salt onto his steaks but it would only draw the juices out. Now he mixes it into oil, which lets it keep its crystallized crunchiness. And if what makes his steaks better and dishes more exciting happens to be called molecular gastronomy, then what’s to object? After all, it’s all about taste, texture and representation, isn’t it?
