Exploring the Science of Haute Cuisine
French chemist Hervé This is a founder of the field of molecular gastronomy which uses the tools of science to explore the methodology and mechanisms of the culinary arts.
Published March 1, 2007
By Adelle Caravanos
Academy Contributor
Students in introductory chemistry courses are taught one important and seemingly obvious rule: Do not eat in the laboratory. But for French chemist Hervé This, eating in the lab is the whole point.
This (pronounced “Teese”) is one of the founders of the field of molecular gastronomy, the application of science to culinary knowledge and practice. Along with physicist Nicholas Kurti and science writer Harold McGee, This was among the first to use the tools of science to explore the methodology and mechanisms of the culinary arts.
This will speak at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) on April 10, as part of the Science of Food series. Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, his first book available in English, was published in September 2006.
It Started with a Soufflé
While preparing a Roquefort cheese soufflé for friends one Sunday in March 1980, This—then an editor at Pour la Science, the French edition of Scientific American—stopped at a line in an ELLE magazine recipe that called for adding eggs two-by-two. Why two-by-two? This wondered. With his scientific curiosity piqued, This tempted the fate of the dinner by adding all the eggs at once—resulting in a dish that was “edible,” but lacked the signature pouf of a perfectly prepared soufflé.
When another party of friends called the following Sunday, This repeated his informal experiment, this time adding the eggs one at a time. Pour la Science did without its editor the following day, as This stayed home to tinker with the recipe and postulate about the precisions, or old wives’ tales, which peppered this, and many other recipes, of France’s haute cuisine.
Since that day, This has collected more than 25,000 of these precisions, with the admittedly lofty goal of putting each one to the test. He continued experimenting in his home laboratory (otherwise known as his kitchen) and in 1986 met Kurti, a physicist at Oxford who shared the same passion for science and cooking. The two began collaborating almost immediately, writing papers and hosting a series of meetings in Erice, Sicily, which were attended by the few active researchers in the newly created field of molecular and physical gastronomy, including McGee and biochemist Shirley Corriher.
In 1995, This was awarded the first PhD in molecular and physical gastronomy, and he took a part-time position in Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn’s chemistry lab at the Collège de France. Five years later, he quit his day job at Pour la Science to work as a full-time researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).
Rules are meant to be challenged
The French culinary method, viewed by gastronomes as close to perfect in its practice, is rife with detailed recipes and long lists of instructions, many of which seem almost silly. To this day, the same set of traditions that calls for cooking green beans uncovered (lest they turn blue in the pan) predicts that a menstruating woman cannot get mayonnaise to emulsify. With assistance from his wife, This debunked both tenets.
This breaks the old wives’ tales into four categories: “Some precisions seem wrong and they are wrong; some seem wrong and they are true; some seem true and they are wrong; and some seem true and they are true.” He says, “I’m most interested in ‘right’ precisions that seem ‘wrong’.” For example, one particular precision instructs a chef preparing a suckling pig to immediately cut off the animal’s head after cooking, to preserve the coveted crackling skin. Although this traditional advice seemed misguided to This, his experiments showed that the pig skin indeed softens if left on the body (due to a layer of water vapor that cannot escape unless the skin is cut).
It Takes a Kitchen-full
As This’s list of old wives’ tales grew longer, he decided to enlist the help of both the culinary and the scientific communities. He began challenging his friend, world-renowned chef Pierre Gagnaire, to create recipes using some of the precisions. These monthly challenges led to a series of more than 60 collaborative molecular gastronomy seminars in Paris.
For each meeting, sponsored by the INRA, scientists, chefs, and students are given a culinary precision in advance (for example: Is it true that omelets become dry when they are over-whipped? And what does “dry” exactly mean?). At the seminar, participants perform preliminary observations and experiments, and decide on protocol and methodology to be used to conduct more controlled tests at home. The attendees reconvene a month later to share their results and reach a consensus on the accuracy and practicality of the precision.
Learning a New Language
Often, the participants at This’s seminars find that it is not the results, but the interpretations, that demand further study. On one occasion, Gagnaire explained to This that when French chefs make wine sauce with butter, they are taught not to whip the ingredients. According to the grand master, shaking the pan ensures the sauce will be “brilliant.”
“Even when Pierre is telling something to me, I do not trust him, technically. I trust nobody, I have to check,” This says. So the chemist set up an experiment to test the preparation methods, and found that visually, the sauces looked no different. But looking at the mixtures through a microscope, he observed that when the sauce was whipped, the melted butter droplets were very tiny.
The reverse occurred with shaking: larger droplets formed. He worked on a calculation, relating the distribution and size of the fat droplets to the energy transferred to the pan. The difference was clear: “Brilliance” is not a visual quality, but a description of the flavor (which is affected by the distribution of the fat in the sauce).
“I know that chefs very frequently use some words to describe taste, not appearance,” This says. “So probably, Pierre has seen an effect, but the words are wrong. [Chefs] can discover very minute effects that we scientists have to interpret.”
The Science and the Practice
This is careful to note the difference between molecular gastronomy—a science—and its various applications, which include molecular cooking, note-by-note cooking, and culinary constructivism. By his own admission, This is not a chef, although he aspires to change the way people cook around the globe. “Cooking in the next century will have nothing to do with cooking today,” predicts this.
“We are sending probes to Mars,” but we have yet to discover the secrets of soup stocks, says This. For him, the stock pot is the final frontier.
Also read: Better Data Means Better Food
About Hervé This
Hervé This is a physical chemist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and author of Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Columbia University Press, 2006.) He will speak at the Academy on April 10 as part of the Science of Food series.
