What is molecular gastronomy – how is it different from other kinds of cooking or baking?
Molecular gastronomy is not really a style of cooking or baking, but rather an approach to culinary arts. Starting in the 1990s with people like the Adrias in Spain and Dr. Hervé This in France, chefs and bakers began applying scientific procedures in their baking and cooking. Dr. This is actually an organic chemist who loved to cook at home, and noticed that baking and cooking are similar to chemical experiments. We currently do some research with the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) chemistry department, and everyone there agrees. This new, scientific style of baking and cooking allows for new tastes and textures. For example, vacuum cooking prevents moisture from affecting the texture of an ingredient like a nut, allowing it to stay crunchy much longer than with regular methods of preparation. What drew you to molecular gastronomy as a field? At first, we didn’t know what molecular gastronomy was, but were both interested in learning the “whys” and not just the “hows” of cooki
