The food we eat today is the same as our ancestors ate? What will be the food of tomorrow? I still wonder, who asked this question in a class of one hundred students, convenient foods, fast food, and fusion food… never talk about fusion. Remember the previous blog. People kill the dish in the name of fusion
I thought of molecular mixology, oh to talk about food or something to do with eating its Molecular Gastronomy, the word not only sounds chemically its a study of the chemistry and physics behind the preparation of any dishes take for example why the rice becomes soft when you boil, or why a mayonnaise becomes firm? Herve This French physical chemist is recognized as the father of molecular gastronomy, but there are many before herve this who have shown a scientific approach towards cooking. Is this going to bring a change? Many restaurants are have molecular food in the menu, how do you call the people in the kitchen as chefs or chemists? The interesting part is there goes a molecular paring of food, like the food and wine combination, interesting isn’t it. There exists a paring molecule, which make the food better for example strawberry and coriander, snail and beetroot, banana and parsley, pineapple and blue cheese, and more interestingly caviar and white chocolate, the high level of amines in both caviar and chocolate, these are the proteins that have broken down from their amino acids state but no so far as to become ammonia, not able to understand, I too have the same problem
I have heard people saying Molecular Gastronomy is not a rocket science, but in south part of India? And they say twenty percent of the tasting experience comes from taste (i.e. from the tongue) and eighty percent from nose (i.e. from the aroma), but I want to divide the eighty and give the half to Eyes (a good food is first eaten with eyes, then follows nose and tongue), there are over nine thousand tasting buds which detects the sweet, salt, sour and bitter and over five to ten million cells capable of detecting smells, but when a food looks awful we don’t even want to try it.
When molecular gastronomy is all about changing the texture, density or viscosity of the molecular structure of a food, in precise when lot of science involved, why do we still call cooking an art? I am not a critic of molecular gastronomy, it’s a great way to introduce to the new form of food, may be in a themed restaurant and it works with great brains which need more understanding, after all a great chef is one who understands the food,
Many cook books suggest the following for boiling eggs: 3-6 min for a soft yolk, 6-8 min for a medium soft yolk and 8-10 min for a hard yolk, but from a scientific view point, the above directions are not very precise. A number of important parameters remain unanswered: What is the size of the eggs? Are they taken directly from the fridge or are they at room temperature? Are they put into cold or boiling water? If using cold water - do you start the timer when you turn on the heat or when the water starts to boil (and in that case, how much water do you use)?do you now that there is in fact a formula for calculating the boiling time for eggs which takes a lot of these parameters into account. Given the starting temperature of the egg T0, the temperature of the water Twater, the desired temperature of the yolk Tyolk and the circumference of the egg c, the cooking time t of the eggs in minutes is given by:
Thanks to Dr. Charles D. H. Williams , a lecturer in physics at University of Exeter. For making us to understand more about boiling eggs
New Dishes named after famous chemists
Gibbs- When an egg white is whipped with oil, a white emulsion is obtained. If this emulsion is cooked in a microwave oven, water heats and expands. At that time, the temperature is about 100°C, which is higher than the coagulation temperature of egg-white proteins. The emulsion is then trapped into a gel. Of course, oil does not necessarily taste good, but imagine infusing vanilla pods in egg white, dissolving sugar into the mixture and adding very good olive oil before microwave cooking. The product is called a Gibbs, after the famous physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903).
Vauquelin - When an egg white is whipped, a small quantity of foam is formed: about 300 ml for one egg white.Why not more? As whipped egg white consists primarily of water (around 90%), proteins and air, it is easy to discover that adding water will produce more foam. If the foam is cooked in a microwave oven, a chemically jellified foam is formed. To achieve a better-tasting product, use orange juice or cranberry juice instead of water, and add sugar to increase the viscosity and to stabilize the foam before cooking. This new dish is named after Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829),
Baumé - Have you ever put a whole egg into alcohol? If you are patient enough, ethanol will permeate the shell and promote coagulation. After about one month, the result is a strange coagulated egg called a baume after the French chemists Antoine baume (1728 – 1804)
Continues…
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
Nicholas Kurti- Hungarian-born physicist
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