Science News on food science
Science News has a good cover story this week about how chefs are learning more about the science of food to make more interesting and tasty dishes. According to the article, "food science" has traditionally been an industrial pursuit leading to Spam, processed cheese, and other "foodstuffs." The molecular gastronomy trend is changing that though. From Science News:
Link to Science News, Link to buy "On Food And Cooking""Twenty years ago there was no science of the soufflé, béarnaise, chocolate mousse, or custard," says chemist and chef Hervé This (pronounced Tiss), of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris...
The relationship between scientists and chefs, or lack thereof, troubled the late physicist Nicholas Kurti. At a presentation for the Royal Society of London in 1969 he lamented, "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."
Kurti's now famous lecture, titled "The Physicist in the Kitchen," was a turning point, says Vega, author, with Job Ubbink, of a forthcoming review on molecular gastronomy in Trends in Food Science & Technology. "It was very impactful on the scientific community." The lecture was peppered with demonstrations by Kurti and his daughter Camilla. They used a vacuum to remove water vapor from meringue and presented a pork loin tenderized with pineapple juice, which contains the protein-splitting enzyme bromelin.
Another milestone, says Vega, was the publication in 1984 of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which explained physics and chemistry for the home cook.
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On Food and Cooking is one of my favorite books to give as a gift to friends and family who are into food and cooking. It is a great, accessible read and is fun to just randomly flip through or as a reference for when random questions like "how is cheese made anyway" come up (and the internet is either not available or it is more fun to look it up in a book and read it to a room full of drunks).
It is interesting that there is a devout "molecular gastronomist" on this season of "Top Chef". So far his concoctions have been hit or miss...
I just read an Asimov short story on this very subject (albeit, of course, spun out to the extremes a la sci fi)...
Good Taste
Alton Brown FTW. http://www.altonbrown.com. Not a shill, just a happy viewer :)
"On Food and Cooking" is part of my cookbook triumvirate, along with the "Joy of Cooking," and Julia Child's "The Way to Cook." It is a must-have for any serious home cook.
Herve This's books "Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor" and his new one "Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking" both published by Columbia University Press, are a great starting point if you're interested in Molecular Gastronomy.
Looks like a good book, but... "Impactful"?
Tits McGee, I've only got two -- "On Food and Cooking" and "How to Cook Everything." I think "How to Cook Everything" probably replaces Joy of Cooking, but I'm not sure.
I have other cookbooks -- specifically Indian and Thai -- but if I had to keep just two, those would be the two.
"On Food and Cooking" has lead to a lot of oral reading over the Grill with Nerds.
I run with "How to Cook Everything" and "Joy..." for most things, and dip into the Silver Palette books now and again.
Funny how rarely I use the Mooswood books here in family life.
I am a Certified Research Chef, a chef by training with a food science degree. I do product development for a food company. The Research Chef's Association (www.culinology.org) is a community of individuals that cross the boundries of chef and food science. All major food companies have these individuals on their ideation teams so that consumers can buy more at their supermarket than spam and velveeta.
Yes, "On Food And Cooking" is fantastic. One of the best cookbooks ever.
On a similar note, two Molecular Gastronomy-ish blogs worth following are
http://blog.khymos.org
and
http://ideasinfood.typepad.com
(and the Mystery Project I'm developing, too, but I can't talk about that.)
I'll be sure to take a look at that. I read Robert Woulke's What Einstein Told His Cook and found that incredibly useful when you end up in that inevitable, "Which side of the aluminum foil do you put the food in?" argument. And now I always wait two minutes before eating microwaved food. That one is here:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Einstein-Told-His-Cook/dp/0393011836/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207002934&sr=8-1
Also not a shill. Married to an argumentative chef.
This rose would smell much sweeter if it didn't have such a silly inaccurate name. Molecular gastronomy, the name must have been coined by someone who knows almost nothing about science. Why not just call it food science. Or if you really must differentiate it from crap like spam and velveeta call it Cuisine Science.
Ugh. Food comes from farmers, not from "ideation teams".
I do have that book, though. Never read all of it... maybe someday... I did enjoy the section on ice cream.
Haven't you heard? Molecular gastronomy is so over.
#12, Lindz- I agree that the name's stupid, but as the summary says, it did serve to distinguish the movement from the industrial implications (Spam, 'cheese food' etc) of 'food science'.
The two original proponents, Nicholas Kurti and Hervé This, were a physicist and chemist respectively, so they did know something about science. This has written an article for Nature which explains some of the history of the term.