When avant-garde gastronomy appeared, it seemed that a frontier was being established between two types of chefs: those who continued to bet on traditional cuisine and those who bet on creativity and technological innovation in the kitchen.
Over time it has been seen that this is not entirely the case, the innovations that have appeared with creative cuisine are increasingly used in traditional kitchens because they streamline processes and preserve food in better conditions. Many machinery and utensils that were once groundbreaking are now integrated into traditional cuisine and the so-called molecular cuisine is increasingly seeking to return to the classic concept of gastronomy. That is why, for the chef of the 21st century, it is essential to know these new techniques and products, and thus be able to boost his career towards better job positions.
Currently, much of what we call molecular cuisine is discreet, not visible to the naked eye. Although it presents elaborations in a novel way, it seeks to enhance and recover traditional flavors. There are many false myths and questions about molecular gastronomy, in this post we will analyze in depth some of these issues.
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Molecular cuisine was born from the concern of some chefs to have a deeper and more scientific knowledge of what happens in the kitchen. For example, to understand what reactions were behind a browned product, later known as the Maillard reaction, and how they could be controlled. From this concern, optimal cooking points or ways to achieve many different textures were found. From this knowledge, processes, utensils and machinery were devised to achieve these chemical reactions in an easier, faster and more controlled way.
That is why during the last years of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century, some avant-garde restaurants, such as "el Bulli", had scientific advisors to better understand what was happening in their kitchens and the possibility of intervention.
It is common for students of the Postgraduate Specialization Program in Advanced Culinary Techniques to start the course by asking what is molecular cuisine? The answer usually begins with the following differentiation:
One of the distinctive traits of molecular cuisine is its focus on precision and experimentation. Chefs who practice this technique seek to understand how the chemical components of food interact with each other and how these reactions can influence the sensory experience of the diner. Common ingredients are converted into new shapes, textures and unexpected presentations, challenging traditional expectations of food. This culinary creativity has led to the creation of surprising and visual dishes that stimulate both the palate and the eye.
Another highlight of molecular cuisine is its ability to spark interest in food science and foster innovation in the culinary industry. Through experimentation with scientific techniques and procedures, chefs can discover new ways to present and enhance flavors, creating dishes that explore new taste and textural dimensions. In addition, this discipline has contributed to the emergence of new approaches to cooking, such as the use of local and sustainable ingredients. It has inspired a new generation of chefs to explore the science behind the food to take gastronomy to unexplored levels.
The origin of avant-garde cuisine could be dated back to the 19th century, when scientific knowledge began to be applied to gastronomy. The study of preservatives and heat treatments were useful because they improved the shelf life of food, the time that a food could last with all its organoleptic and nutritional qualities. But it was in a BBC television program broadcast from 1969 that the scientist Nicholas Kurti of Oxford University and the cooking professor Elizabeth Cawdry Thomas began to speak publicly about the union between cooking and science.
Nicholas Kurti, who ended up being one of the greatest standard-bearers of molecular cuisine, wondered why "while we measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we ignore the temperature inside our soufflés." Together with Harold McGee, a writer specializing in gastronomy, and Hervé This, a physicist and chemist from the French National Institute for Agronomic Research, he participated in the first International Workshop on Molecular Gastronomy and Physics in Erice, Sicily. An event that was held every year until 2004. From these conferences and the thinking of these precursors of molecular cuisine, molecular gastronomy gained prominence and influenced many restaurants. Molecular cuisine had been democratized.
Among these restaurants that began to apply science in the kitchen there were two that stood out in particular; el Bulli of Ferran Adrià, which made a clear commitment to molecular cuisine from 1990 and The Fat Duck of Heston Blumenthal, which opened its doors in 1995.
Molecular gastronomy and cuisine is usually studied in gastronomy schools as part of a broad curriculum. It is usually studied as part of those avant-garde techniques necessary to build current and creative gastronomic proposals. This means that if you are a chef and want to learn new techniques and delve into molecular cuisine, you may have problems finding the right training, as you will find generalist or monographic courses of short duration.
Studying molecular cuisine involves learning about the physics and chemistry of food, about the most important reactions that occur in the act of cooking and their control. You will also have to know how to work the key techniques of molecular cuisine, as well as the machinery, utensils and products involved in it. Finally and most essential, one must know how to organize this knowledge and skills in a creative and scientifically rigorous manner. In this way, molecular cuisine can be very useful to improve the customer experience and the culinary proposal of your restaurant.
Many of the techniques used in molecular cuisine are born from the need to optimize processes, enhance flavors or improve the preservation of food and its nutrients. Thus, many of these techniques were born to be invisible in the dishes. It has been from the use of creativity in the kitchen that they have been given more prominence, for example, in the use of different textures in cooking.
Knowing these techniques gives you greater capacity to diversify the offer of a gastronomic business. Therefore, it can mean the opportunity to expand and differentiate the culinary offer of a restaurant or get better jobs in restaurants that have the resources, technologies and molecular cooking utensils to produce it.
This does not mean that all these techniques are applied in a restaurant, nor that knowing them will necessarily lead you to work in a molecular restaurant. Having all the machinery is expensive and not within the reach of every restaurant, but knowing how to choose what will be most useful for your type of business is key to improving the quality of the offer and the customer experience. These are some of the most important techniques of molecular cuisine:
Spherification: it is the encapsulation of a liquid inside a gelatinous medium in the form of sphere produced by means of an additive. Its function is to present a product in a different way, but it can also serve to protect or conserve a liquid that we do not want to be dissolved with the rest of the dish.
Deconstruction: more than a technique, it is a concept, designed by Ferran Adrià, which consists of rethinking an elaboration by deconstructing it into its parts and reconstructing it in a different and surprising way for the diner. This involves both the order of the ingredients and their quantity or the way they are cooked or served.
These techniques can be applied to various ingredients to create innovative types of food and dishes.
Many of the ingredients used for molecular cuisine are not strictly understood as ingredients, they are considered additives. The difference between an additive and an ingredient is that the additive does not have the function of nourishing the consumer, but of provoking a reaction. It fulfills a technological and contextual function such as thickening, stabilizing, foaming, emulsifying, preserving or gelling. The most commonly used ingredients and additives in conventional kitchens are texturizers, used to provide textures to foods.
Because of the bad reputation that some additives have, such as those considered food preservatives hazardous to health, an additive is not by definition harmful to health. Some of these additives are of vegetable, mineral or animal origin and the fact that they are catalogued and produced in laboratories means precisely that they are controlled. Their composition is measured and studied, which is why there is legislation that determines their dosage of use. It is important to bear in mind that these additives are found in very small proportions and normally do not add flavor.
At the same time, the food industry is getting closer and closer to haute cuisine chefs, as it seeks to bring these chefs and haute cuisine techniques closer to the general public. These brands offer new product formats based on the new trends in professional cuisine. From Albert Adrià to Nandu Jubany have contributed to design products for the food industry such as potato chips, nougat, croquettes, snacks or beer.