99 Station Street

It is one of those subjects that can drive people mad. Do we need ice cream made with liquid nitrogen or an egg white that could whip up to a bath filling foam? One of the true heroes of the scientific approach to cooking is Heston Blumenthal. At the Fat Duck, the mad professor of hospitality taunts us with his experiments and crazy concoctions. The real question is does this improve the taste and / or the experience of the food? Luckily the folks who professionally rate restaurants do not get carried away with the razamatazz. It’s these same inspectors who have given the thumbs up to Heston other molecular gastronomists including Ferran Adria in Spain.

Is science a new thing in the kitchen? Yes and No. New science is always new and that is commonly the gastronomic greatness that we see with the kitchen boffins. The No part goes back to medieval times and the means by which food was preserved or fermented. Science requires research and control to produce consistent results. This would have meant experimentation and testing on many foodstuffs we still have today; beer, wine, cheese, cured meats and dried harvest goods. Burton has a good example of this from the 12th century where monks produced beer. The abbeys and monasteries were home to scholarly behaviour as well as food and drink production.

Two ingredients used then are still used today in various household products, yeast and saltpetre. Without these two ingredients the evening pint or two and a bacon butty the next morning would be impossible. Order a meat feast pizza, I know it’s not British, but it is a good example of science in action. The base uses yeast, the salami is created with saltpetre (it kills bugs, especially the ones responsible for botulism) and dried oregano. Real corned beef, salted beef, uses saltpetre as a curing agent and this is a British product.

Anyway time to dabble with the blackpudding and treacle sorbet …

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.