Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (4 page)

the temperature of a compound by 1°C (1.8°F).

Furthermore, it is not true that putting something in boiling water always

leads to softening, dissolving, and the formation of a sort of purée or mush.

When you put egg white in boiling water, for example, it hardens. And al-

though it is true that collagen—the tissue that holds muscle fibers in meat

together—dissolves slowly in boiling water, protein coagulation inside these

cells produces a tough material.

Nor is it true that the crust formed during frying prevents oil from pen-

etrating meat and helps to concentrate its juices. The crust is full of cracks,

through which vapor bubbles escape during the course of frying (they can be

seen with the aid of a microscope or in some cases with the naked eye) and

through which oil enters. Furthermore, the notion that the juices of a piece of

meat go to the center during cooking rests on a misunderstanding. Because

these juices are mostly water and therefore not compressible, the effect of

cooking a piece of meat (even by boiling in water) is to force them outward,

away from the center. What Brillat-Savarin thought was concentration is actu-

ally expansion.

Just the same, there is a certain amount of truth in what the Professor says,

some of it useful. This is why it is so important to distinguish what is right

from what is wrong—to rationalize the old “chemical art” of cooking. Above

all we want to retain the idea that “certain things which you do inattentively,

and only because you have seen others do them, are nonetheless based on

10 | introduc tion

the highest and most abstruse scientific principles.” In other words, culinary

phenomena—the phenomena that generate transformations in food—are at

bottom nothing more than chemistry and physics. To cook well, at least from

the technical point of view (art, as I say, is another story), we have to know both

these sciences.

This is precisely why Nicholas Kurti and I sought to promote the notion of

molecular gastronomy: Chemistry and physics, judiciously applied, can tell us

how to preserve the tenderness of meats, how to master the chemical reactions

that give the crust of roasted meat its wonderful flavor, and how to avoid the

failures that are commonly encountered in making a variety of sauces, from

mayonnaise to hollandaise, béarnaise, ravigote, and many others. Do we dare

make the leap? We hesitate because as human beings, which is to say primates,

we have a fear of new foods or of foods that are unfamiliar to us. Jonathan Swift

famously said, “He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.” No matter that

each new recipe may be likened to the discovery of a new continent, science is

there not only to guide us but also to help us exercise our innate capacities for

discovery and invention. The application of eternal laws of nature both informs

and stimulates culinary innovation.

Is it enough to read cookbooks? Certainly not. They are generally little more

than collections of recipes, which is to say protocols that relegate cooks to the

status of mere executors. Moreover, they contain a great many doubtful in-

structions: Steak ought to be seared, because this causes an impermeable crust

to form that retains its juices (a sound practice, as it happens, although the

reasoning is wrong); in making stocks, meat should be placed in cold water

to begin because this will cause “albumen” to coagulate and so prevent the

loss of juices; mayonnaise will break if women try to make it when they are

menstruating; egg whites will not stiffen if one changes the direction in which

they are whisked; and so on. Clearly a bit of science must be brought to bear

if we are profitably to explore our culinary heritage, as I propose to do in the

pages that follow.

And a bit of poetry as well? Its absence will be regretted only by those who

prefer the catastrophes that have routinely been courted by respecting the tra-

ditional method for making soufflés rise, for example. It is a mistake to sup-

pose that in understanding physical phenomena we lose the ability to take plea-

sure in culinary art. Besides, one finds poetry where one may: Are the names

“ionone” (for a molecule with a delicate violet odor in dilute alcohol solution)

Introduction
| 11

and “hexanal” (for a molecule that imparts a fresh herb flavor to virgin olive

oil) any less beautiful than “cauldron” or “knife”?

Poetry aside, let us consider efficiency. Time-honored maxims, proverbs,

old wives’ tales, folk beliefs, and culinary rules are millstones round our necks

that weigh us down when they are false and wings that carry us aloft when

they are true. Hence the importance of molecular gastronomy, whose primary

objective is first to make an inventory of such rules and then to select those that

have withstood careful analysis. Culinary art has everything to gain by separat-

ing the wheat from the chaff of empirical observations.

In the first part of this book, then, we will consider the rules that have long

guided the preparation of a variety of familiar dishes: stock, hard-boiled eggs,

quiches, quenelles, gnocchi, cheese fondue, roast beef, preserves—almost

twenty dishes in all.

But anyone who cooks rationally, relying solely on the laws of physics and

chemistry, will soon run up against the limits of these two sciences in the

kitchen. Take meringues, for example. You want them to rise? Then place them

in a glass vacuum bell jar and pump the air out; the air bubbles dilate and the

meringues swell and swell, to the point that you with left with “wind crystals.”

Nothing to chew on there—a culinary disaster.

This leads us to ask ourselves what we like to eat and why. Further ques-

tions immediately arise: Why do we stop eating? How many tastes do we per-

ceive? Is flavor modified by changes in temperature?

Modern physiologists of flavor have studied these questions, carrying out

experiments suggested to them by their expertise in a particular field of re-

search. They have thrown valuable light, for example, on mastication, the

almost unconscious act that, to the civilized mind, separates gluttons from

gastronomes. Brillat-Savarin thought this distinction so important that he de-

voted the first part of the introduction of his book to it. Immediately after the

celebrated aphorisms of the preamble, he reports (or possibly only imagines) a

“Dialogue Between the Author and His Friend”:

friend: This morning my wife and I decided, at breakfast, that you really ought to have

your gastronomical meditations published, and as soon as possible.

au thor:
What woman wants, God wants
. There, in five words, you have the whole guide

to Parisian life! But I myself am not a Parisian, and anyway as a bachelor …

12 | introduc tion

friend: Good Lord, bachelors are as much victims of the rule as the rest of us, and some-

times to our great disadvantage! But in this case even celibacy can’t save you: my wife

is convinced that she has the right to dictate to you about the book, since it was at her

country house that you wrote the first pages of it.

au thor: You know, my dear Doctor, my deference for the ladies. More than once you’ve

complimented me on my submission to their orders. You were even among those who

once said that I would make an excellent husband! Nonetheless, I refuse to publish

my book.

friend: And why?

au thor: Because, since I am committed to a life of serious professional studies, I am

afraid that people who might know the book only by its title would think that I wrote

nothing but fiddle-faddle.

friend: Pure panic! Aren’t thirty-six years of continuous public service enough to have

established the opposite reputation? Anyway, my wife and I believe that everyone will

want to read you.

au thor: Really?

friend: Learned men will read you to learn more from you, and to fill out for themselves

what you have only sketched.

au thor: That might well be …

friend: The ladies will read you because they will see very plainly that …

au thor: My dear friend, I am old! I’ve acquired wisdom, at least:
miserere mei!

friend: Gourmands will read you because you do justice to them, because at long last

you give them the place they merit in society.

au thor: This one time you’re right! It is incredible that they have been misunderstood

for so long, the poor fellows! I suffer for them like their own father … they are so

charming, and have such twinkling little eyes!

friend: Moreover, have you not often told us that our libraries definitely lack a book like

yours?

au thor: I’ve said so… . I admit that, and would choke myself rather than take it back!

friend: Now you are talking like a man completely convinced! Come along home with

me and …

au thor: Not at all! If an author’s life has its little pleasures, it also has plenty of stings in

it. I’ll leave all that to my heirs.

friend: But you disinherit your friends then … your acquaintances, your contemporaries.

Have you enough courage for that?

Introduction
| 13

au thor: Heirs! Heirs! I’ve heard it said that ghosts are deeply flattered by the compli-

ments of the living. That is a divine blessing which I’ll gladly reserve for the next

world!

friend: But are you quite sure that these compliments will reach the right ghost? Are you

equally sure of the trustworthiness of your heirs?

au thor: I haven’t any reason to believe that they will neglect one such duty, since for it I

shall excuse them from a great many others!

friend: But will they, can they, give to your book that fatherly love, those paternal at-

tentions without which a published work seems always a little awkward on its first

appearance?

au thor: My manuscript will be corrected, neatly copied, polished in every way. There will

be nothing more to do but print it.

friend: And the chances of fate? Alas, similar plans have caused the loss of plenty of

priceless works! Among them, for instance, there was that of the famous Lecat, on the

state of the soul during sleep … his life work …

au thor: That was, undoubtedly, a great loss. I am far from aspiring to any such regrets.

friend: Believe me, heirs will have plenty to cope, what with the church, the law courts,

the doctors themselves! Even if they do not lack willingness, they’ll have little time for

the various worries that precede, accompany, and follow the publication of a book, no

matter how long or short it may be.

au thor: But my title! My subject! And my mocking friends!

friend: The single word
gastronomy
makes everyone prick up his ears. The subject is

always fashionable. And mockers like to eat, as well as the rest. And there’s something

else: can you ignore the fact that the most solemn personages have occasionally pro-

duced light works? There is President Montesquieu, for instance!

au thor: By Jove, that’s so! He wrote the temple of gnidus … and one might do

well to remember that there is more real point in meditating on what is at once neces-

sary, pleasant, and a daily occupation, than in what was said and done more than two

thousand years ago by a couple of little brats in the woods of Greece, one chasing, the

other pretending to flee …

friend: Then you give up, finally?

au thor: Me? I should say not! I simply showed myself as an author for a minute.

And that reminds me of a high-comedy scene from an English play, which really

amused me. I think it’s in a thing called the natural daughter. See what you

think of it.

14 | introduc tion

The play is about Quakers. You know that members of this sect thee-and-thou everyone,

dress very simply, frown on war, never preach sermons, act with deliberation, and

above all never let themselves be angry.

Well, the hero is a handsome young Quaker, who comes on the scene in a severe brown

suit, a big, flat-brimmed hat, uncurled hair … none of which prevents him from being

normally amorous!

A stupid lout, finding himself the Quaker’s rival in love, and emboldened by this ascetic

exterior and the nature it apparently hides, teases and taunts and ridicules him, so that

the young hero grows increasingly furious and finally gives the fool a good beating.

Once having done it, though, he suddenly reassumes his Quakerish manners. He falls

back, and cries out in his shame, “Alas! I believe that the flesh has triumphed over

the spirit!”

I feel the same way. After a reaction which is certainly pardonable, I go back to my first

opinion.

friend: It simply can’t be done. You admit that you have shown yourself as an author for

a second or two. I’ve got you now, and I’m taking you to the publisher’s. I’ll even tell

you that more than one friend has already guessed your secret.

au thor: Don’t leave yourself open! I’ll talk about you in return … and who knows what