Vol. XXXIII · Modern Techniques and the Frontier Plate 1 of 11modernist cooking, molecular gastronomy, Kurti, Hervé This, Harold McGee, elBulli, Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, sous vide, hydrocolloids, liquid nitrogen, rotary evaporator, centrifuge, Modernist Cuisine, history of science in cookingMT

Modernist Cooking.

In 1969 the physicist Nicholas Kurti cooked a meringue in a vacuum and roasted meat with a hypodermic syringe on a Royal Institution stage. "It is a sad reflection on our civilisation," he said, "that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés."

The scientific study of cooking is old — Count Rumford's slow-cooked mutton in the 1790s, Liebig's meat extract in the 1840s — but its modern history starts with Nicholas Kurti's 1969 lecture "The physicist in the kitchen". Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking (1984), the source of much of this course, made the chemistry readable for cooks. In 1992 Kurti and the chemist Hervé This organised the first workshop on "molecular and physical gastronomy" at Erice in Sicily. Meanwhile cooks were borrowing: Georges Pralus developed sous vide for the Troisgros restaurant in 1974, from industrial vacuum packing (XVI.7); in the 1990s and 2000s Ferran Adrià at elBulli and Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck built menus on gels, foams, spheres and liquid nitrogen.

The tools came mostly from the food industry and the laboratory: hydrocolloids such as xanthan, gellan, agar and methylcellulose (XXXIII.2), sodium alginate and calcium for spheres (XXXIII.3), lecithin and cream siphons for foams (XXXIII.4), liquid nitrogen and dry ice (XXXIII.5), precise water baths and probe thermometers (XXXIII.6), enzymes such as transglutaminase (XXXIII.7), centrifuges, rotary evaporators and vacuum chambers. In 2006 Adrià, Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and McGee published a statement insisting that their aim was delicious food, not novelty or chemistry for its own sake; in 2011 Modernist Cuisine documented the techniques in five volumes. What lasted in ordinary kitchens is mostly the quiet part: precise temperature, sous vide, and understanding why. The workshop follows the timeline.

Below: a timeline of moments that brought science into restaurant and home kitchens, the moment for the tool you choose highlighted, and a table of where each modernist tool came from.

What you will learn
Workshop
Dates from the sources cited. Tool origins: sous vide from industrial vacuum packing; hydrocolloids from industrial food thickeners and gelling agents; alginate spheres from the industrial production of fake cherries and pimento fillings; liquid nitrogen from cryogenics; rotary evaporators and centrifuges from chemistry laboratories; transglutaminase from industrial meat and fish processing.

What lasted

Some modernist dishes were fashions — the foam on everything, the sphere for its own sake — and faded as fashions do. What lasted was a habit of mind and a set of reliable tools. Sous vide and accurate thermometers let any cook reach exact doneness (XVIII.2) and pasteurise at low temperatures safely (XXXIII.6). Hydrocolloids gave stable sauces, gluten-free breads (XXVI.9) and vegan gels. Understanding why a sauce breaks (X.5) or why a crust browns (VIII.1) made cooks better troubleshooters. This course is itself a product of that movement: cooking explained, measured and tested.

For a home cook, the modernist tools worth owning are few: a probe thermometer (I.4), a digital scale accurate to a gram (and a fine one to 0.01 g for hydrocolloids and spices), and perhaps an immersion circulator. Everything else — siphons, alginate, liquid nitrogen — is optional, and some of it needs real care (XXXIII.4, XXXIII.5).

At the stove

Cook an egg in a water bath at 63 °C for an hour and at 75 °C for 15 minutes. Compare: this is precision temperature, the most useful modernist idea.

Kurti's 1969 lecture was broadcast on BBC television; among his demonstrations was a "reverse baked Alaska" — a frozen centre in a hot shell — made by heating a liqueur-filled meringue in a microwave oven, which heats the water-rich liqueur but not the dry, insulating foam.

Terms

Molecular gastronomy
The scientific study of cooking; also used for the restaurant style.
Sous vide
Vacuum-packed food cooked in a precise water bath.
Hydrocolloid
A substance that thickens or gels water.
Modernist cuisine
Cooking that uses scientific tools and ideas.
Modernist cooking borrowed tools from science and industry: sous vide (1974), hydrocolloids, spheres, foams, liquid nitrogen. Its history runs from Kurti (1969) and McGee (1984) to elBulli and Modernist Cuisine (2011). What lasted: precise temperature and understanding why.

Sources

  1. N. Kurti, "The physicist in the kitchen", Royal Institution Friday Evening Discourse, 14 March 1969; the first International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy, Erice, 1992 (Kurti and H. This); G. Pralus's sous-vide foie gras for the Troisgros restaurant, 1974; F. Adrià, H. Blumenthal, T. Keller and H. McGee, "Statement on the new cookery", The Observer, 10 December 2006; N. Myhrvold, C. Young and M. Bilet, Modernist Cuisine, 2011.
  2. H. McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd ed., Scribner, 2004.