Where would mushroom foam, bacon and egg ice cream, and blow-torched, deep-fried, caramelized cinnamon sticks with Meyer lemon be without Herve This? Or, more precisely, what would Ferran Adria, Heston Blumethal and Grant Achatz be cooking if this eminent French chemist hadn’t once ruined a cheese soufflé by tossing in all the egg yolks at once? The culinary disaster inspired This to spend the next 27 years collecting and testing “cooking precisions”—culinary rules that explain what does—and doesn’t—work in the kitchen.
In “Ion Chef” (Wired, August 2007, p. 58), Sally McGrane Interviews Herve This at a Paris bistro over an airy chocolat chantilly conjured in a jar to his own scientific formula. The article is a nice introduction to the man who, along with late Oxford physicist Nicolas Kurti, invented the field of molecular gastronomy—dubbed by Harold McGee as ‘the scientific study of deliciousness.” McGrane writes that after decades of research, This “came up with a formal system of classification for what happens when foods are mixed, baked, whipped, fried, sautéed in lime juice and so forth.” The system permits “the creation and pairing of billions of novel, potentially tasty dishes.” As an example, This “randomly generated a formula describing the physical microstructure of a previously nonexistent dish, then asked chef Pierre Gagnaire to plug real ingredients into it.” The result--a bitter orange, scallop and smoked tea combination--wowed Gagnaire’s customers.
Now This plans to investigate “the role that love—of the cook for the diners, the diners for the cook and of everyone for each other—plays in determining tastes.” That’s true alchemy, for which, I suspect, there is no formula.
I’ve been eyeing This’ book, Molecular Gastronomy, for a couple of years. After reading this article, I finally ordered it.