Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor Read Online Free PDF Page A

poetry where one may: Are the names
    “ionone” (for a molecule with a delicate violet odor in dilute alcohol solution)
    Introduction | 11
    and “hexanal” (for a molecule that imparts a fresh herb flavor to virgin olive
    oil) any less beautiful than “cauldron” or “knife”?
    Poetry aside, let us consider efficiency. Time-honored maxims, proverbs,
    old wives’ tales, folk beliefs, and culinary rules are millstones round our necks
    that weigh us down when they are false and wings that carry us aloft when
    they are true. Hence the importance of molecular gastronomy, whose primary
    objective is first to make an inventory of such rules and then to select those that
    have withstood careful analysis. Culinary art has everything to gain by separat-
    ing the wheat from the chaff of empirical observations.
    In the first part of this book, then, we will consider the rules that have long
    guided the preparation of a variety of familiar dishes: stock, hard-boiled eggs,
    quiches, quenelles, gnocchi, cheese fondue, roast beef, preserves—almost
    twenty dishes in all.
    But anyone who cooks rationally, relying solely on the laws of physics and
    chemistry, will soon run up against the limits of these two sciences in the
    kitchen. Take meringues, for example. You want them to rise? Then place them
    in a glass vacuum bell jar and pump the air out; the air bubbles dilate and the
    meringues swell and swell, to the point that you with left with “wind crystals.”
    Nothing to chew on there—a culinary disaster.
    This leads us to ask ourselves what we like to eat and why. Further ques-
    tions immediately arise: Why do we stop eating? How many tastes do we per-
    ceive? Is flavor modified by changes in temperature?
    Modern physiologists of flavor have studied these questions, carrying out
    experiments suggested to them by their expertise in a particular field of re-
    search. They have thrown valuable light, for example, on mastication, the
    almost unconscious act that, to the civilized mind, separates gluttons from
    gastronomes. Brillat-Savarin thought this distinction so important that he de-
    voted the first part of the introduction of his book to it. Immediately after the
    celebrated aphorisms of the preamble, he reports (or possibly only imagines) a
    “Dialogue Between the Author and His Friend”:
    friend: This morning my wife and I decided, at breakfast, that you really ought to have
    your gastronomical meditations published, and as soon as possible.
    au thor: What woman wants, God wants . There, in five words, you have the whole guide
    to Parisian life! But I myself am not a Parisian, and anyway as a bachelor …
    12 | introduc tion
    friend: Good Lord, bachelors are as much victims of the rule as the rest of us, and some-
    times to our great disadvantage! But in this case even celibacy can’t save you: my wife
    is convinced that she has the right to dictate to you about the book, since it was at her
    country house that you wrote the first pages of it.
    au thor: You know, my dear Doctor, my deference for the ladies. More than once you’ve
    complimented me on my submission to their orders. You were even among those who
    once said that I would make an excellent husband! Nonetheless, I refuse to publish
    my book.
    friend: And why?
    au thor: Because, since I am committed to a life of serious professional studies, I am
    afraid that people who might know the book only by its title would think that I wrote
    nothing but fiddle-faddle.
    friend: Pure panic! Aren’t thirty-six years of continuous public service enough to have
    established the opposite reputation? Anyway, my wife and I believe that everyone will
    want to read you.
    au thor: Really?
    friend: Learned men will read you to learn more from you, and to fill out for themselves
    what you have only sketched.
    au thor: That might well be …
    friend: The ladies will read you because they will see very plainly that …
    au thor: My dear friend, I am old! I’ve acquired wisdom, at