Science has many uses and applications (obviously). It manages to turn up in the most unlikely and unexpected of places. This is exemplified by the newest trend in food and cutting edge restaurant cuisine is molecular gastronomy , or the application of scientific concepts to food preparation. As described in a recent Science article on the subject, the study of how protein is denatured with heat can make for a more tender egg: eggs cooked at 65°C are less rubbery than those cooked at 100°.
Restaurant chefs have capitalized on this trend and have pushed to a different level. Homaro Cantu, the executive chef at Moto in Chicago has perfected the use of a laser to generate vanilla smoke from a vanilla bean. The vanilla smoke is then used to infuse ingredients with the purest flavor of vanilla, without the distraction of a burnt aftertaste. Cantu has also developed a technique for carbonating intact fruit – imagine biting into a grape or kumquat filled with undiluted, pure effervescent juice. His kitchen looks more like a lab, complete with nitrogen tanks and printers (the restaurant menu is printed on edible paper with edible ink, developed by Cantu).
I am now finding out just how useful my education can be. I wonder if Moto needs a virologist… On second thought, I hope they don’t.
More pictures of Cantu’s cuisine here. I wish I could tell you what the picture at the start of the post is of, but I have no idea. I think it’s donut-related (from Moto’s website).
I studied food science as an undergraduate student and I always got frustrated everytime I had to explain how much science and technology went into the making of the corn flakes, ice cream and Twinkies that we all take for granted every day. That’s because most people have no idea how food is produced and processed.
But people do understand, for the most part, how food is cooked and prepared in a kitchen. So if there’s more science and tech going into the cooking of food, then maybe more will appreciate that food production and preparation isn’t just about mixing ingredients in a bowl (just like doing science at the bench isn’t just about mixing liquids in test tubes)!
I couldn’t agree more. It’s easy to overlook the founding principles behind everyday activities, but taking them into account may make your steak taste better (or make your experiment work, for that matter).
Cooking is very much like doing experiments in the lab: You measure/weigh, incubate/heat, vortex/mix, refrigerate/freeze, boil, transfer liquids/solids to containers and do the dishes at the end!