Wired's Molecular Gastronomy FAQ
From Wired's Molecular Gastronomy FAQ:
Is that extremely cool or extremely lame? I can't decide.
Well, it costs about 250 bucks for a meal. That might throw it one way or the other for you. On the other hand, it often involves lasers, and it has been mathematically proven that everything with lasers is cool.
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16 Comments:
Calculate me as dubious. I think it's a total food fad. And if the credit crunch continues, the mad scientists may have a little trouble finding people to swallow their witty excess.
cooking monster
DaveFaris at 11:35AM on 02/06/08
Hi-larious!
Kerosena at 11:47AM on 02/06/08
Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a gastronome, a gastroenterologist and a gastropod.
Some impressive claims by the author of a very humorous take on molecular gastronomy. If I had the time I'd love to try to write something myself on the photo displayed of his hair style mixed in with the ideas of what is a gastroenterologist mixed in with the idea of what is molecular gastronomy. With added analysis of how all this plays into economics and personal finance too.
MG (let's call it that, shall we? It sounds just like a fancy car along with being the opposite of GM which does not sound delectable in people's minds) does one thing that traditional foodie-ism does not.
It is creative.
The chefs who work with it are struggling to create new ways to delight people in the area of their palates (which are in some people, connected to their brains). They are not just schlepping out the old favorites made with one or two twists to look like self-created new favorites (which is a time-honored tradition among chefs and really its the only way to make real money at the game).
Ovens, stoves, kitchen tools - the ones in common use - all came from someone's head at one time. At one time they were all new. Cooking techniques the same. The act of cooking has come some way from merely throwing the dead elk on the woodfire then diving in with hands and teeth, tossing the grilled fat-dripping kidneys across the circle sitting cross-legged on the chilly soil as their chairs, to the most respected diner.
Some of what is being created in MG will last and will trickle down over time into more common use, just because it works well or is fun or makes for a new taste sensation (and gourmands i.e. foodies do become jaded - it is part of the charm of being a gourmand i.e. foodie, non? That one has an edge over mere mortals who are not gourmands i.e. foodies in matters of food and taste?)
Although generally there is really nothing new under the sun, this stuff approaches it more closely than anything else out there in the genre of things that can be eaten.
Though it is great fun to poke fun at it.
Karen Resta at 12:12PM on 02/06/08
I always have liked Lore Sjöberg... now that I think of it, a surprising amount of the Brunching Shuttlecocks archives do deal with food.
I understand the idea of cuisine stimulating those parts of the brain beyond those bits that rule the senses and the capacity for physical pleasure, but I think that food which sacrifices the latter in the quest for the former is missing the mark; I'm perfectly willing to try assorted foams and essences (so far I've only tried a truffled root vegetable foam; not horrible, it just seemed a bit pointless), but the concept of becoming jaded is still an abstraction to me, and somehow suggests the problems of those who haven't enough problems.
Molecular gastronomy has been around for a while now, and from the very beginning most of it has sounded like an effort to make food interesting to people who aren't really that interested in food, for example, those who literally can't taste the difference between different qualities or types of the same ingredient or food (e.g. chocolate)/don't care anyway. This isn't meant as an insult, by the way, since most people do have such blind spots in a small way: I myself freely confess to being able to differentiate between three types of wine only (red, pink, and white), and care little for any of them. They make my stomach hurt.
I find the idea of molecular gastronomy intriguing, since I do enjoy science and experiment very much. I just don't care to have my own food deconstructed: That's what I have a digestive system for.
But please call me if you want your food deconstructed... That sounds challenging and fun.
mongoose at 12:58PM on 02/06/08
Yeah, nice guy but I'd love to do something with his hair. But that's just my way - I do judge people by their hairstyles.
If a foam is only a foam and not something that makes the taste and texture together surprise and rise above what one has previously experienced, then the assay has failed. Like anything else, this technique can be used well or used to produce mediocrity.
The people that I see who are interested in MG, however, are not those who can not taste. They are those who are interested in seeing if taste can be taken beyond the normal everyday experience. The ones I know of are well-traveled and very well educated - some are so well educated that they may tend to be on the intellectual side which can be boring to many people and/or a turn-off, for it sure ain't like watching The Simpsons.
Being jaded can happen and does happen in any field one enters intensely if one is lucky, after a certain point of time spent and involvement in the field. It is pushing past that jadedness that is the challenge and pushing past that jadedness is what creates new things in the world - for most new things in the world have been created by experts who became jaded and bored who then pushed past it to express a new vision or to create a new thing.
Translated into something that most everyone is interested in, the tools of MG are like sex toys. Some people just plain aren't interested. And some people are.
Karen Resta at 1:50PM on 02/06/08
I'm not entirely convinced that--at least over the long term--the desire to simply take taste to another level, or being extremely well-travelled or educated are evidence that someone has a sensitive palette. Most members of my immediate family fall into the well-travelled/educated/crashing intellectual bores (some even have refined palettes), so this isn't a form of antagonism to these groups. I can't even exempt myself, at least not from the last, since I'm extremely enthusiastic about MG as a concept, not least for the questions it raises, and love the idea of going through all the meta-levels implicit in 'meta-eating'. I discussed this with my boyfriend all through dinner, and will probably be attempting to instigate discussions with every one of my unfortunate friends.
But what remains is concept, and it doesn't seem to have enough substance to make it more than interesting in itself. And, apart from those for whom food per se isn't of that much interest, this is dissatisfying in the long run.
What seems most important about MG is that it DOES create the opportunity to consider and argue what food is, why we eat, and what, precisely, makes a food more than mere sustenance, and then beyond that, what makes it superlative.
mongoose at 2:55PM on 02/06/08
I'd have to agree with you mongoose, that the desire to take taste to another level - or that being well-traveled or educated could make a person definitively palate-sensitive.
Palate-sensitivity in and of itself may be DNA at its most basic. Or it may just be that mysterious and wonderful thing called luck. Or course studying and thinking does add to the mix if the mix is okay to start off with.
The concept alone is interesting in the way of an overlap with the art world (that's art world capitalized) and what is art or what is food is (categorically).
Also food technology, industrial food vs. artisanal, and food science is another overlap that might be mused upon.
One does not have to lose (or not have) a basic vital interest in a thing because their ways of thinking of it is on a more conceptual level as initiating thought rather than emotional level as initiating thought.
I'll have to start quoting now. I'd personally rather muse on these thoughts
To as great a degree as sexuality, food is inseparable from imagination. Jean-Francois Revel
Or maybe
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle. G.K. Chesterton
As opposed to musing on this thought
A man is better pleased when he has a good dinner upon the table than when his wife talks Greek. Samuel Johnson
Yes, as you noted mongoose, it does create the opportunity to consider all you noted - and that, is good.
Karen Resta at 3:54PM on 02/06/08
Edit my first sentence so I don't have to argue with myself please - to say that travel etc does not necesarily make a person palate-sensitive.
Karen Resta at 3:57PM on 02/06/08
Got that (re:last comment)!
How far do Grape-nuts GO (the last few days I've been reading my way through the Father Brown works, so that quote grabbed me)?!
Can't disagree with you on the points you've made, although the doubt remains, as to whether, in the hands of many proponents of MG, the focus shifts to the conceptual (away from, and at the expense of the more concretely sensuous), rather than expanding to include it, so that it adds dimension; what I'm really arguing against is extremism in any direction. That, and I suppose I'm a bit leery of supporting my own tendency to experiment, since I would feel that I was trying to rationalise some of the fearful things I've done in the kitchen.
mongoose at 3:27AM on 02/07/08
Grape Nuts Go Far. Use them in an MG fashion and they will go even farther because then absolutely no one would want to eat them. :) Or alternately, use them in an MG fashion and tout their healthiness too and charge twice the price for it all. Two concepts for the price of one.
The focus shifting to the conceptual in MG is part of its sizzle. It's what sells the thing within a certain milieu. People buy ideas when they buy food. No matter what the food is. The conceptual is the veneer, and just as fashions in clothes change each year so it is with fashions in food. Haute in any category of goods always has something conceptual attached to it, no matter what the concept actually is. In MG, part of the concept is concept. Ha, ha! Great joke, isn't it?
It's not for everybody, and not everybody could afford it - whether it be in the professional kitchen or in the home kitchen. To my mind, MG doesn't really "belong" in the home kitchen (yet). It does not hold the elements of home cooking within it as basis that work in a true or honest fashion. It does not say "home". If I were still in the position of being a professional chef in the milieu I worked in, however, I definitely would be playing with it. Just to stay creative and to be competitive. Diners who can and do eat at fancypants restaurants as a matter of course (or matter of necessity as that is where their business and entertaining is done) do become both jaded and demanding of fashion at the same time. For home however? No.
There are some people who do this at home, of course - people who want to play at being pretend-chefs (you know, you can find them wearing chef coats and pants and fussing over whether Danskos or some other shoe would be better for them in their spare time even though they've never worked a day in a professional kitchen. It makes me want to put on a doctor's coat and stethescope and walk around pretending to be like a doctor thinking of this) or people who just love to putter with food to serious intent.
Maybe in ten years or so Target will have home versions of MG equipment. It's possible. Some of the equipment actually could be useful or fun for the home cook scaled down to usable size and affordable price and stripped of concept.
I'll wait, in my home kitchen, till then to fuss with it. :)
Karen Resta at 8:14AM on 02/07/08
I probably ought to put this to bed, but unfortunately, the topic interests me a lot. Until I began coming across the term 'molecular gastronomy' applied to a style of cooking, I regarded it purely as the science of understanding food at a chemical, physical, and (from the standpoint of those who eat the food) physiological level; essentially, what McGee explores in 'The Curious Cook'.
I was wondering if this usage was now an anachronism, so I checked wikipedia, and was glad to see that this meaning still held.
At any rate, I thought what you said was interesting, since I've actually always regarded the home as the ideal place for MG (in its fundamental sense).
This may have been due to my parents not doing much to discourage experimentation and even the occasional explosion in the kitchen (admittedly, home was never exactly 'Ye Cosy Olde Cottage'). But perhaps it will be an eventual widespread, home-based incorporation of the experimental roots of MG that will ultimately define the position of the cuisine that has grown out of it.
mongoose at 1:34PM on 02/07/08
No reason to put a thing to bed till it's thoroughly tired out. Besides, I feel like we're having a coffee klastch. :)
My understanding of the MG term overlaps your understanding but with a different historic base.
The usage of the term originally came to me through the activities of Herve This and Pierre Gagnaire. I posted the link to Gagnaire's site to illuminate a certain je ne sais quoi that inhabits the world of the chef who enters into being a MG darling. At some point, MG became a monde of its own in the world of restauranteurs. It had certain things attached to it in general aside from focusing on the science of cooking and those things had a tremendous amount to do with style. There was also a subtle push within MG that hinted loudly that professional cooking should no longer be a trade as it had been for centuries, but rather a profession. And not only a profession but a profession also one where Art could be produced, if the stage was set right - art that perhaps could fit into categorical alignment with other art sold at galleries - not just art that would affect the tastebuds and the theatre of the front of house. This is where a high part of the conceptuality of the stuff comes from, in a certain milieu or place. (If I use the word milieu again I am going to scream.) Cooking now can be respectable as it is hooked up to science. Cooking now can be respectable and more as it is hooked up with universities, not trade schools or apprenticeships.
Wiki notes:
While some chefs do, in fact, engage in the scientific investigation of cooking - this would only represent a fraction of their work. Just as the work of an architect may involve building scale models... "building scale models" does not accurately describe the work of an architect, as there is much more involved. The application of the term "molecular gastronomy" to describe the entirety of a given chef's work is no less inaccurate, regardless their engagement in the scientific investigation of cooking (molecular gastronomy) to whatever degree.
I guess that helps in terms of how I think of the term being used. In the world of chefs. I first heard the term as a chef and tend to continue to think that way. I continue to think that way even as a home cook which can make me quite cantankerous at times - even more cantankerous than how one usually thinks of chefs as being.
As a side note, here is something I like about This. Herve, not just this but This.
Quote:
Although his main focus is on physical chemistry, he also attributes great importance to the emotional aspect of cooking, as the title of one of his books shows: Cooking is love, art, technique.
That is my greatest interest in cooking. The emotional aspect of food to those at the table. :)
Karen Resta at 6:13PM on 02/07/08
I've been turning this over in my head for the last couple of days, and after looking at Gagnaire's site (my French is spotty, but I was able to get some sense of the man and what he does) I think more than ever that those who work with MG and do it well--are known for it, even--are those who actually thought this way about cooking already. They didn't take up MG as the latest fashionable trend, they realised that they had an opportunity to articulate and formalise their approach through their preparation and presentation of food. To the extent that MG can manifest itself in a cuisine, these chefs make it work; the extent to which this succeeds is, in these cases, largely a matter of how a given diner reacts. As a trend to be taken up by those who simply want to be up-to-date or fashionable (rather than realising 'AHA! THIS, is what I've been thinking, all along...'), the outcome is bound to be indifferently successful, since this second (and much larger) group of chefs are not the scientists that the first group are; science isn't an approach that can be assumed, it is one that grows out of a fundamental way of thinking about things. Which is very likely why, when I had my little heap of root-vegetable foam, I could only think 'meh'. The food did not, COULD not, provide an intelligent and rational context for it.
I still think that deconstruction is an interesting thing to do to food, even if the outcome is not necessarily pleasing, but it doesn't follow that the immediate result should be taken as the final stop. The longest-sighted outlook on investigating MG seems to be that which doesn't stop at deconstruction, but instead asks 'where to from here?' Is separating a taste or texture revealing something that stands on its own, or is it merely stripping it of at least part of the context that makes it pleasurable? How much does context depend on habit, and to what extent is that something that should be respected/treated as a barrier that stands between someone and the opportunity to expand their experiences, something to be broken down?
Perhaps MG evokes such strong reactions because it has so much potential to re-envision food, but in the wrong hands, such restatements are meaningless and unpleasant. This seems like something every chef should consider exploring (even if only to reject), which is not to say that every chef should send his or her efforts in this direction out to diners, any more than every painter should decide to exhibit cubist work: Braque did it beautifully, but some of his contemporaries who made concerted efforts in the same direction (rather than simply exploring this way of seeing as studies), and who created only weak work in this style, should have continued working in the realist tradition of which they were masters, and in which they produced strong work.
But I won't even get started on food as art/craft, because I'm fairly certain that there's a limit to the number of words one can have per post, and I could easily produce a longish article on this :D
mongoose at 4:14PM on 02/09/08
That was an excellent and well-written analysis, mongoose. Your interest, knowledge, and ability to write make me think that indeed you could be an very very good food writer. And the fact that I enjoyed reading what you wrote makes me say to you, please do try it. Do write a longish article and submit it somewhere. The world of food writing needs this sort of thing. It really does.
Yes, your little pile of root vegetables and MG, the feeling of it all. Yes, to the notion of cooks (kitchen technicians) taking up the idea as a fashionable thing and trying it on, sometimes to find the hat simply does not fit due to the way a mind works or does not work.
As an executive chef in a place where my job was to answer to the whims of my clients, guests, diners - to feed them their dreams rather than my own (rather like being able to perform many dances upon request or to play a variety of musical styles on an instrument upon request, to make those being served the happiest possible beings) (if I was still doing that career) I would have to pick MG up and find the cook that was in the kitchen who most fit the profile of someone who did have a MG based mind, then assign the project to them to carry. The best kitchens, in my opinion, do have cooks who can both swing into the other positions and who should be cross-trained to do so in a pinch, or even just for the fun of it or for the hell of it (as reminder of exactly how difficult each job can be for team mates can sometimes forget and it makes for a better running kitchen when they do not forget this) but also cooks who wear their specialties and who get to use their specialties to shine and to feel good - whether the task fits into their "job description" or not.
MG is not my thing by far. I go the other direction in taste. Start with the very simple and make it glow, as simply as possible. A foam of any sort would not be able to compete, with me personally - with the most perfect roast chicken or with the green bean that somehow became an essence of itself without having to contort itself too very much into other shapes. Which means, of course, that the primary science of the thing for me resides in the growing and in the procurement. All else follows. And since I learned to cook by doing, and am not a science person but a metaphoric person - how to cook lives in my mind not as something measurable but simply something Known. A magic that one somehow soaks up. So basically I would be anti-MG if I did not use the businesslike part of my brain (which I also hate to do but apparently must, in life ha ha).
I've really enjoyed reading all your thoughts on this. :) I truly hope you try to put it in a real piece - your passion shows.
Karen Resta at 12:25PM on 02/10/08
Karen, thank you, that's extremely kind of you to say. I have the impression, though, that nearly everyone wants to write about food, and I doubt any editor would ever see something of mine were I to submit it. Knowing me, I'll probably give it a go, but...
Still, being in conversation with a small group of individuals who are sincerely interested in food, like those here on seriouseats, has the distinct advantage of nearly immediate interaction, and I really do like that :)
Incidentally, your mention of 'perfect roast chicken' managed to be so evocative, I had to run out and get one, and it's sitting in its brine bath as I write.
mongoose at 9:54AM on 02/13/08
It's true. Almost everyone who cooks (or I should say almost everyone who eats even) wants to be a food writer.
But not everyone has something to say that stands out from the crowd, mongoose. So, if you like it try it. It certainly is as wonderful a waste of time as anything else at worst, and at best maybe who knows?
..............................
There's not a whole lot that can trump a perfect roast chicken, is there. :)
Enjoy!
Karen Resta at 11:43AM on 02/13/08