NOTES: A SOUPçON OF SCIENCE: CREATIVITY AT THE INTERFACE OF CHEMISTRY AND CUISINE

Although I will be going down to Wellington for the tail end of their annual food festival Wellington on a Plate, I was sorely disappointed that I would miss out on the lecture by Professor Kent Kirschenbaum of New York University titled A Plate of Molecules: Chemical Gastronomy. Quite apart from the fact that I am only spending a weekend in the capital, and the lecture is on a Wednesday, the tickets for the talk sold out months ago. So, it was like all my Christmasses had come at once when I discovered only a few days ago that he would also be presenting in Auckland. Unfortunately, there was so little advertising of the lecture, brought to us by the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry as part of the celebrations for the International Year of Chemistry 2011, that the room was less than half full!

No matter, for those of you that didn't manage to make it for whatever reason, I hereby give you my version of events.

The Quillaja saponaria eggless meringue had a bitter aftertaste and drew moisture from my handOne of the amazing pictures and diagrams from cookingissues.comMango caviar from El Bulli restaurant, courtesy of www.elbulli.infoTo make this, you mix mango juice and sodium alginate and put it into a dropper. Then you squeeze out little pearls into a calcium chloride bath. The calcium ions form a cross linked gel with the alginate ions in what is known as polymer ion exchange, and you end up with a liquid surrounded by a thin jelly coating.

Making mango caviar

Ferran Adrià of El Bulli has also used the same technique to make spherified pea soup, which apparently "explodes in your mouth like ravioli". Cute.

Salep increases viscosityAs for mastic, it is a tree resin or sap which has been used in food for over 2000 years. It may even have been found in an ancient shipwreck in the seabed of the Mediterranean. Only in 1998 was this resin identified as Cis-1,4-poly-β-myrcene, and it is one of the original chewing gums. Not too sure whether it is added to dondurma just for its flavour, or whether there is also a functional component. (Professor Kirschenbaum was planning to investigate Kauri gum in New Zealand, as the resin from the Agathis australis tree has also been used as chewing gum in the past.)

A tin containing pieces of mastic, and a box of salep flour

It is now forbidden to export salep, as the purple orchids it comes from is not a sustainable ingredient. Fortunately, it is possible to make stretchy icecream using a similar ingredient instead. The konjac plant, from the tubers of which shiritaki noodles are made, is also high in glucommannans. A number of people have now tried making "konjac dondurma", and it seems to be pretty successful, by all accounts. Professor Kirschenbaum's recipe went something like this:
2g mastic (Chios Gum Mastic, Large Tears)
8g konjac flour
dry ice
1.6L milk
400g sugar
Cool with liquid nitrogen.

Experimental Cuisine Collective

Professor Kirchenbaum is a founder of the Experimental Cuisine Collective, along with pastry chef and former dessert restaurant owner Will Goldfarb, and Amy Bentley of the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. The group was founded in 2007 and now has over 1,800 members. Its mission is to advance delicious cuisine while educating students in the natural sciences.

One inspiring young person Professor Kirschenbaum mentioned is Lauren Hodge, the winner of the inaugural Google Science Fair 2011 in the 13-14 year old age group. She studied the effect of marinades on the amount of carcinogens produced by barbecuing chicken and discovered that having a more acidic marinade component (lemon juice) inhibited the production of a carcinogenic compound, while soy sauce actually increased it.

Suggestions for Chemists and Chefs:
Be creative
curious
collaborative
(com)passionate

Recommended reading:
Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking
Jeff Potter, Cooking for Geeks
Hervé This, Molecular Gastronomy
Myhrvold et al., Modernist Cuisine

Posted by Tutik W