Great headlines of our time, that one from the Guardian:
Hervé This (pronounced ’Tiss’) is a star, the country’s most famous chemist. His specialism is the science of cooking. For him, every foodstuff is ’a chemical mixture’. ’When aromatic compounds are formed on the surface of a roast,they are the result of a chemical reaction. When mushrooms turn black after being chopped, it is the fruit of a chemical reaction.’
Over the years, his musings on chemical reactions have led to a number of discoveries. He has worked out how to uncook an egg. He has calculated that you can produce 24 litres of mayonnaise with a single yolk. He has invented a Béarnaise sauce by replacing butter with melted chocolate, as well as ’chocolate chantilly’ (a form of whipped chocolate prepared in the same way as crème chantilly). He’s baked an egg for an hour at 55°C, managing somehow to leave the yolk ’exceptionally smooth and tender’.
Almost 10 years ago, Hervé investigated colloids (substances that are neither completely solid nor liquid, such as emulsions, mousses and gels) and devised a system of formulae based on the dispersion of gases, liquids and solids within each other.
I go through ancient recipe books, preferably from the 18th and 19th centuries, jot down what they have to say and test it,’ he says. He says that Madame de Saint-Ange (who wrote the bible of bourgeoise cuisine in 1927) is a mine of sayings, but that much of her advice is incorrect. More exact are Le Livre de Cuisine by Jules Gouffé (first published in 1867) and Auguste Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire. ’Some of Escoffier’s advice is startlingly sound,’ says Hervé. He recommended, for example, that pepper be added to a stock only eight minutes before it is taken off the heat. The explanation, Hervé has discovered, is that further cooking means the more desirable, spicy aromatic molecules volatilise and are replaced by bitter tannins.
But what really intrigues me, of course, is exactly how he managed to unboil an egg. He explains that when an egg is cooked, the protein molecules unroll themselves, link up and enclose the water molecules. In order to ’uncook’ the egg, you need to detach the protein molecules from each other. By adding a product like sodium borohydride, the egg becomes liquid within three hours. For those who want to try it at home, vitamin C also does the trick.
While the discovery may be fun, it does not have many practical applications (most of us prefer our eggs both cooked and flavoured with salt rather than strange chemicals). Many of his other results, however, can be applied to everyday cooking. He says that adding oil to water while cooking spaghetti does not prevent the different strands from sticking together - unless you use very little water and litres of oil. He advises that, in order for a poached or fried egg white to be evenly cooked, you should sprinkle a little salt around the yolk (it speeds up the cooking of a protein found there, which coagulates less easily than the other proteins in the egg white). The discovery he is proudest of, however, concerns meat stews. ’For many centuries, so much rubbish was written about them.’ One tradition said that you should start off cooking the meat in cold water. Another claimed the opposite. According to Hervé, it makes no difference. The meat loses the same amount of weight in both cases.
Hervé believes his originality lies in the fact that he applies his knowledge of chemistry to the food of ordinary people, while other scientists work in the food industry. ’Food science,’ he says, ’has never dealt with cooking. It doesn’t give a damn about soufflés and stews.’
Sounds interesting. Too bad he’s French!
Front page
I'm not sure how, but...
… there has to be a “right to life” angle here.
"The scientific study of deliciousness"
The way guys like This, Adria, Gagnaire…. changed the food world is inspiring.
I’d briefly worked in decent kitchens while I was in school, but I still thought of food basically as fuel. About 10 years ago, a friend of mine strongly suggested that I look at it differently. The combination of ideas and sensory experience are as close as I get to religion.
Harold McGee called it “the scientific study of deliciousness”. Sounds about right to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_g…
If you take a break from Hilbama stuff and spend a little time looking around eGullet, you can find a whole lot more.
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=…
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?show…
Bruce F, you get some free drink tickets too
Havent been around much because I am cranking like mad to get copy together for a new website on Historic Cooking. Meaning that your links are going to get a thorough looking-over as soon as I get done with this Glossary part.
I am seriously jealous of this This person’s cookbook collection though. Mine is pretty decent—lots of reprints but a dozen or so originals, thank you eBay—but too concentrated on 1st 1/2 of the 19th century. Sounds like he has some seriously older stuff, not to mention French which is the holy grail.
thanks. Thanks for the original article as well Lambert; I shall have to look this guy up and see what he has available in English. My French is limited to the “plume de ma tante” and “merde de la vache” variety, not exactly up to reading heavy duty chemistry. :)
Did someone say "pony"???
I do so love ponies.
The Manifesto
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonth…
French
Thanks for this very friendly text. Why is it too bad that I am French? (
indeed, are we really French, or English, or German… I remind you that we have 32 grand-grand-grand-grand parents, and it is very unfrequent that they come from the same place).
Yeah, the French get those keen accent marks.
That’s why I hate them. Hillary is French.
* * *
Sorry, H. This!! (Were you really H. This?!??! We are so honored! Would you like to guest post on your work?!?!?)
The “too bad he’s French” comment is ironic. In the American political context, we are making fun of, I suppose the American equivalent of the anti-Dreyfusards; racist and stupid, they hate all things French because France was sensible about Iraq and wanted no part of it.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
no, i really can't stand the french
this blog needs more germans, for Balance. Goethe did something great with bacon, didn’t he?
/scampers away/
welcome H! we make a lot of silly jokes around here. i hope they’re not too lowbrow for a man of such excellent taste. i, for one, am absolutely a peasant, and confess so regularly.
A quote referenced here exemplifies the attitude...
… that we’re parodying:
http://vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/2008…
“This is where Colin Powell brought us all yesterday. The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”
(The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, from 2003)
Goethe was Canadian?
[scampers, following CD]
“Hey, Canadians? What’s with the round bacon?”
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.