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England, France, Japan, Spain, Russia – molecular cuisine excites the imagination of leading culinary experts from different countries, becoming trendy, one of the most promising areas of modern gastronomy. Culinary historian Alexandra Grigorieva talks about how the latest discoveries in chemistry, physics and biology are taking their place on our plates.
Ink jelly, cauliflower mayonnaise, fluffy foie gras chantilly, purple beetroot and pink cubes of stewed octopus create a delicious backdrop for raw tuna roll, layered dessert with strawberries in strawberry saffron juice, with a surprise at the bottom – a slice of red grilled bell peppers… All these dishes cooked in the Gallery restaurant and served during the Moscow tour of Pierre Gagnaire, one of the most famous chefs in the world, the creator and head of four restaurants in London, Tokyo and Paris (one of They were awarded the highest rating of the world culinary community – three stars of the Michelin guide), designed in the style of the so-called molecular gastronomy. This current trend combines the creative freedom of the chef with the latest discoveries in chemistry, physics and biology.
Taste of illusion
What in our taste preferences depends on the work of the senses, and what is the result of certain illusions of perception – both momentary and global? Physicist Peter Barem reflects on this:
“Neither physics, nor physiology, nor psychology can give an exact answer to this question. Much depends on the work of our taste buds, but it’s not just about them. Professional tasters who are able to determine the year of harvest by taste and aroma of wine, tasting white wine with a harmless red dye, simply do not recognize it! We perceive the same ice cream differently depending on the lighting: it seems to us strawberry if the light in the room is pinkish, or apricot if it is orange. Some people, after trying plain yogurt, claim that they felt crunchy flakes in it if someone crunched over their ear during the experiment. In other words, an element of illusion is invariably present in our perception of taste, and how great its role in each particular case is unknown.
From kitchen to lab…and back again
This unusual culinary trend was first talked about in the early 1990s, when Oxford University physics professor Nicolas Kurti and a French chemist from the Laboratory of Chemistry of Molecular Interactions College de France Herve This opened the first joint seminar on this topic. Kurti was engaged in the analysis of physical phenomena in the kitchen (for example, it was he who came up with the idea of injecting pineapple juice into meat before baking to make it especially tender, with a crispy caramelized crust). And Tis was interested in confirming or refuting seemingly inexplicable folk culinary rules that are passed down in many families from generation to generation. In addition, he deduced molecular formulas for all types of French sauces, scientifically substantiating the features of their recipes and cooking technology.
It was the studies of Thies and Kurti that became the theoretical basis for the culinary experiments of Pierre Gagnère and his colleagues. Since 2001, Hervé Thies monthly offers Gagner to think about this or that topic that interested the scientist from an academic point of view, and he, in turn, responds with an original recipe that allows him to reveal this topic on a pragmatic, “kitchen” level.
Beyond the usual
Over the past decade, many talented chefs, such as Ferran Adria of Catalonia and Heston Blumental of England, have sought to incorporate the latest advances in modern science into their cuisine. Passionate about technological innovation, they expand our understanding of cooking as such. Sometimes they manage to achieve amazing results: by adding harmless, tasteless and odorless calcium chloride to the fruit mixture (in our country, many used it to curdle milk), they are able to cook jelly so that it freezes in a few seconds at any temperature – even at +40°C. And a few milligrams of sodium alginate create an even more curious effect: fruit foam solidifies with pearl bubbles that look like caviar.
Emulsions, reagents, and futuristic-looking appliances that are more appropriate in the laboratory than in the kitchen are now at the peak of culinary fashion. However, Pierre Gagnère is indifferent to this magnificent props: “It is much more interesting for me to know everything about the products I work with, and I don’t need any special equipment for this.” So, together with Herve Tis, they perfected the preparation of meringue, proving the truth of another popular culinary “belief”: “It turns out that by adding only 5% fruit (for example, lemon) juice, you can beat a whole cubic meter of the lightest, airy meringue from one egg white. capable of flying away at the slightest breath of the breeze! Molecular gastronomy reveals many amazing properties in the most ordinary products: “Isn’t it interesting that in reality the taste of a tomato familiar to us is not a given at all, but the result of a reaction between the pulp of the walls of a tomato and the liquid that is in them? says Pierre Gagnier. – If you carefully pump it out of a tomato, there will be no taste! So our mouth, connecting one to the other, is an active participant in creating the tomato flavor.”
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Such a classic as frying meat also turns out to be an area worthy of study in molecular gastronomy. “Meat is best baked at a low temperature (55–58°C) for several hours,” explains Pierre Gagnier. – So it turns out tender, pink and juicy. (We are talking primarily about beef and lamb – it is still not recommended to do this with a bird, although salmonella dies safely in a few hours at this temperature.) It is at this temperature that the collagen in the meat softens, and the juices are not lost and the meat doesn’t get tough. Well, the habit of “sealing” meat juices by frying it first is just another traditional delusion: by normal weighing, you can make sure that the juices evaporate anyway. The purpose of this action is completely different: to create a magnificent aroma of “fried meat” – the same one that, rising from the altars, delighted the ancient Greek gods on Olympus. In order not to lose this important component of the roast, it is enough to quickly singe a piece of meat on the highest heat (we often use a blowtorch for this) and only then put it in an oven preheated to 50 and a little degrees.
Tradition or creativity
Lobster with cauliflower mayonnaise and artichokes, planned by Pierre Gagnier for the menu of his Moscow tour, changed just before serving: the chef noticed wasabi in the kitchen of the Gallery restaurant and immediately realized that this particular touch was missing in his dish. Gagnier constantly changes his recipes – they are in continuous evolution, each time becoming a little different. “In my opinion, there are two cuisines: the author’s kitchen, that is, the kitchen of the artist, tied to creativity, and the kitchen of the artisan, tied to technology and traditions. They are absolutely equal, there is no way to say that one is superior to the other. My type of cuisine is the first: for me, the concepts of “cooking” and “creativity” are completely inseparable, and the molecular approach does not contradict this at all.
Anatomy of taste
The concept of taste is one of the key concepts in molecular gastronomy. “If you think about it, what is the taste of an apple? Pierre Gagnier reflects. “It is made up of many shades of flavors, and each of them is self-sufficient, and there is no single taste of an apple.” Peter Barham, a polymer specialist and professor of physics at the University of Bristol (UK), agrees with him. “Taste is an extremely complex thing,” he says. Compare sugar and chocolate. Sugar owes its sweetness to one type of molecule, and there are hundreds of them in chocolate – more than two hundred volatile aromatic compounds alone. It contains sweetness, bitterness, natural salt, and slight sourness (the result of the fermentation of cocoa beans) … Different parts of the tongue, palate, pharynx and larynx are not equally sensitive to taste stimuli. The most susceptible to sweet, for example, is the tip of the tongue, to bitter – its root, to sour – edges … So, whether we chew it or, say, suck it, our perception of chocolate will depend.
Another interesting problem is the compatibility of tastes. “Often times, foods pair well because they have similar types of flavor molecules,” continues Peter Barem. – Most of the great combinations of cooks have already discovered themselves empirically, but there is always a place for a scientific experiment. What best sets off black caviar? White chocolate! This is an absolutely enchanting combination, and Heston Blumenthal often uses it in his menu. Dark chocolate and Roquefort, strawberries and peppers, and even cauliflower with cocoa powder are very well combined. The same principle works in reverse: for example, I do not advise you to try basil and coffee together, which do not have any common molecules. All in all, molecular gastronomy has a lot to explore!” However, Pierre Gagnère warns against becoming overly academic: “In fact, any cuisine can be considered molecular, because certain physical and chemical processes in the preparation of a dish do not depend on whether the chef thinks about it or not. The advantage of molecular gastronomy is that it makes the chef think about a lot of unexpected things, and this gives rise to many new exciting gastronomic ideas and discoveries.”