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Recommended: ESSAY ON molecular gastronomy

On a Friday night of 1984, Hervé This, a French chemistry researcher at Agro Paris Tech, invited a couple of friends for dinner. The main course was cheese soufflé. However, as it has happened to anyone who has ever tried to make soufflés, they never rose. Thanks to this simple incident, the most important gastronomic movement of the last fifty years began. This went back to his lab at Agro Paris Tech and decided to study the chemical processes that occur in a soufflé when cooking. He discovered that if he had just lowered the temperature in his oven 10°C, his soufflés would have risen perfectly. He then expanded his study to include all the chemical and physical processes involved in cooking (Harris). Since then, molecular gastronomy, as it is referred to, has been adopted by a handful of chefs throughout the world including Ferran Adrià in Barcelona, Heston Blumenthal in London, and Wylie Dufrane in New York, who have all created their own type of molecular cuisine using all types of innovative techniques based on the scientific processes that occur when cooking.
Hundreds of new techniques that sound more like chemistry class instructions than actual recipes can be seen in molecular restaurants. The most popular one is spherification. This technique used to make round spheres of different sizes can be used with basically any liquid. It is based on the principle that when sodium lactate comes into contact with calcium alginate, a thin layer of gel will form. Another common technique that enhances the presentation of a dish is emulsification. This term, which normally refers to the combination of two substances that normally do not mix well, has been used to make flavored foams. Foams are made by combining any liquid with soy le...

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... Innovations." The New York Times [New York City] 1 June 2008: n. pag. Print.
Cantu, Homaro, and Ben Roche. Cooking as Alchemy. TED. TED, Mar. 2011. Web. 8 Nov. 2012. .
Dubner, Stephen J., prod. "Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup." Episode #17. Freakonomics. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. .
Harris, William. "How Molecular Gastronomy Works." HowStuffWorks. Discovery Communications, n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2012. .
Myhrvold, Nathan. Cooking as Never Seen Before. TED. TED, n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2012. .
Posada, Claudia. Personal interview. 21 Nov. 2012.

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