We have long suspected it. And now it is official. Chemists make the best cooks--well, almost. Heston Blumenthal, who is one of the UK's best chefs, does not consider himself a chemist but he is a self-confessed devotee of molecular gastronomy--the discipline that aims to put the science into cooking.
Blumenthals restaurant, The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire--the place where he carries out his culinary experimentation--has been voted recently the world's number two best eatery, second only to the appetisingly named French Laundry in California. It owes its success, says Blumenthal, at least in part to the science.
'I use science every day in the kitchen,' he says, 'it is an extremely useful tool.
So, what is on the menu? As an appetiser you might be tempted to sample the snail porridge, 'something of a Fat Duck classic and, whatever you think of the title, utterly delicious. Blumenthal writes in his weekly column in The Guardian. Or how about cauliflower with chocolate or sardine on toast sorbet, rounded off--though it is so bard to decide Berkshire--for dessert with smoked bacon and egg ice cream?
'What Heston is about is fantastic food that surprises and delights,' says Peter Barbara, a physicist and molecular gastronomist at Bristol University.
'He uses a lot of chemistry, but also a lot of physics and psychology--the chemistry of how the brain works, how the food interacts with tastebuds, how the signals get to the brain and what the brain does with them. Our brains interpret what we are eating so you do not actually taste what is there.'
Barbam has been collaborating with Blumenthal since the day, in the mid 1990s, that Blumenthal rang hint out of the blue to ask: 'Why should I add salt to the water when I cook green vegetables?'
The cookbooks offer various Explanations--some even suggesting that salt lowers the boiling point of water, which makes Barham laugh.
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