26 February, 2006

The Applied Science of Deliciousness

Last week I spent a couple nights downtown listening to culinary discussions. Wednesday night at the State Historical Society was "Cooking Philosophies: A Chef's Debate". Truth be known, it wasn't really a debate but more a roundtable discussion. The occasion was the presence of Harold McGee, food scientist and author of the seminal On Food and Cooking.



Joining him were Tory Miller, head chef at Madison' L'Etoile Restaurant, and Tami Lax, restaurateur behind Harvest and The Old Fashioned. The discussion was moderated by Madison food writer Raphael Kadushin. Here they are:


(L to R: Kadushin, McGee, Lax, and Miller)


The conversation was wide-ranging. Some of the discussion concerned things on the scientific end of the spectrum such as food irradiation while most of the topics were directed more at the art of cooking. E.g. - culinary traditions of Wisconsin. The proceedings started with about half an hour of discussion initiated by questions from Kadushin while the rest of the talk involved the audience. I can't remember a whole helluva lot about what was discussed as it's been a few days but I'll lay down what I can.

Tory Miller reiterated several times the philosophy of L'Etoile which is to use locally-grown and raised ingredients – sort of a modified living-off-the-land scheme – and this philosophy of eating locally (and organic) was bandied about throughout the night. An audience member asked about Wisconsin culinary traditions. Tami Lax chimed in by saying that these traditions were at the heart of her newest restaurant venture, The Old Fashioned, which is an upscale replica of the supper club. It looks to Friday fish fries, prime rib, chicken on Sundays, the hamburger with an egg on top which was served at taverns for breakfast up north in lumber country, et al.



Miller reiterated L'Etoile's philosophy and remarked that he is a Wisconsin native. Thusly he grew up with fish fries as well as hamburgers, custards, and the like. He said that he liked just about anything in a basket which drew a hearty laugh from everyone.



McGee gave a more scientific perspective to the proceedings as he fielded questions. For instance, someone asked about genetically modified foods as well as irradiation.



I was reminded of this same question at the lecture given by Edward O. Wilson earlier this month.While I cannot speak to the mindset or motivation of the person that asked the question, I admit that I immediately thought that this was just another stereotypical hippie-Lefty looking for scientific validation of their fear of genetically-modified & irradiated foods – so-called "Frankenfoods" – and ammunition for criticism of companies like Monsanto. Like Wilson, McGee said that there is no evidence that any of these foods are harmful. I liked how he mentioned that the irradiation process is called cold pasteurization(?) and reminded folks who have no problem with the use of heat in making food safe that heat is a form of radiation.

There was also talk about "molecular gastronomy", a new culinary trend, which leads me to McGee's solo lecture on Thursday. It was at Engineering Hall and focused on the theme of cooking as chemistry. He began with Denis Papin who invented the pressure cooker in 1679. It was dubbed "Papin's Digester". McGee recounted how Papin and his fellow scientists would get together and cook various foods in it and note how they turned out. He especially noted their trial with cooking pike, a particularly bony fish. The result was that the bones were cooked so much by the device that they were edible. McGee continued by talking about Count Rumford who invented the convection oven. He studied convection in liquids after noticing that the center of bowls of thick soup remained hot while the top cooled. He ended up inventing the convection oven in an attempt to create a potato drying device. The lecture continued with a man whose name I cannot recall who wrote a book called (I think) The Chemistry of Cooking sometime in the 19th century. It was this man who is responsible for the fallacy that searing meat seals in the juices. Moving into the 20th century, he mentioned the rise of Home Economics in the first half and stated that it contributed basically nothing to the culinary arts & sciences. Then a slide appeared on the wall of a man looking into this tall glass apparatus. A scientist did a show about the chemistry of cooking for the BBC in 1969 and it was a still from the show. There was a quote of his about how we know the temperature of the surface of Venus but have no idea what happens inside of soufflés. This led to a chart showing the temperature inside a soufflé and how it changes over time. It goes up at first and then plateaus before dropping. Why would the temperature drop? Because heat is being used as the proteins congeal or bonding or whatever it is they do. In other words, chemical reactions going on inside the soufflé require energy and so the average amount of energy there, i.e. – temperature, drops.

Aside from the history lesson, McGee talked about specific culinary mysteries. For instance, he addressed why French chefs traditionally whip egg whites in copper bowls. He related how he initially dismissed this practice as having no basis in science but then did some experiments at home and found that whites whipped in copper do hold their consistency better than those whipped in a glass bowl. This led him to enlist some help and the results of further experiments were published in the scientific journal Nature. Their initial theory proved to be wrong and he explained that they found that what was going on once again involved proteins bonding. Another bit of research that he did involved using a computer to simulate a hamburger cooking. He and his partners in crime wanted to know how the thickness of a burger and frequency of flipping affect cooking times. He showed a slide of charts and thermal images which revealed that doubling the thickness of a burger increases cooking time fourfold. In addition, the more frequently you flip your burger, the quicker it cooks. Turing every six minutes yielded a fully-cooked burger in about 12 minutes while flipping every 15 seconds, meant that your dinner was done in only about 7 minutes.

Much of the lecture was in regards to the aforementioned molecular gastronomy. MG is a culinary approach with chemistry in the fore that seeks to experiment and expand cooking and eating. McGee mentioned the Spanish chef, Ferran Adrià, who is one of the more well-known faces associated with molecular gastronomy who appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. (Apparently Chicago is also at the vanguard of this trend with a couple restaurants. I can only remember Moto.) McGee then went on to show us some of the dishes by various cooks and described some of the generally chemistry behind them, when applicable. While I cannot recall all of the examples, here are a few.

One involved a restaurant which began meals with a palate cleanser. It was a meringue that was infused with vodka and a couple other ingredients that I cannot recall. And so the server scooped up a dollop and plopped it into liquid nitrogen. Pulling it out, diners ate the frozen meringue, had their palates cleansed, and found fog puffing from their mouths.

Then there was shrimp serverd skewered on a pipette. A pipette is like a turkey baster that's used in chemistry labs. One eats the shrimp and then gets a flood of sauce.

There was some kind of dish that looked like an egg that was fried sunny side up but the white was coconut-flavored while the yolk was carrot-flavored.

"Olive oil caramels". These are tear-drop shaped edibles. A liquid is created using agar, I believe, as a thickening agent. The chef dips a straw into the liquid and blows into the straw to create a bubble – a bit like blowing glass. A drop of olive oil drips down the straw and the bubble falls off the straw creating the tear-drop shaped "caramel". Then the bottom is dipped in vinegar powder and a crystal of sea salt is attached towards the top, like a bow.

Then there were the transparent ravioli. Instead of using dough, one chef made ravioli by congealing veal consommé with some kind of seaweed extract like cargeenan. Thusly you can see into the little pillow and see the filling.

There was also a type of risotto that is flavored with saffron. The chef behind the dish went about deconstructing it. Instead of all the flavors being mixed together, they were separated out into their constituent parts with a twist. Instead of rice, there were water chestnuts shaved to look exactly like rice. The saffron component was actually a foam. There was also a sauce and everything sat in a gel of some kind.

The last thing I can recall is McGee describing how Adrià serves 43 course meals that involve a lot of foams so you get these ephemeral bursts of flavor that are not filling.

It was a really interesting lecture. I enjoyed both the history parts and the look at molecular gastronomy. McGee also fielded some questions from the audience. This allowed him to explain the chemistry why garlic gets bitter the more you cook it while onion gets sweeter. He also explains why woks and cast iron cookware gets seasoned. And when anwering one question, part of McGee's answer involved the phrase "the applied science of deliciousness", which I really loved. I came away wanting to check out one of these molecular gastronomy restaurants in Chicago and experience the style first-hand. I am also determined to get my grubby little hands on McGee's books as I'm sure I'll find them fascinating. And I just want to get my ass in the kitchen and do some cooking!

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