Institute For The Future

Democratizing Food Science

Earlier in the week, I was trying to pass along a research article to a colleague and inadvertently sent her a recipe for home-brewed beer. So it's with the geeky excitement of a kitchen tinkerer, as well as a research interest in the evolution of food preparation and consumption, that I pass along news of a molecular gastronomy home kit. Put simply, molecular gastronomy is the application of chemistry to cooking, and though it's rarely practiced at the moment, I think this kit is an early signal of a democratizing of food science that, like homebrewing beer, will come to gradually but significantly impact broader food markets. The kit itself is fairly simple--it contains some chemicals, pipettes and other basic chemistry equipment, and a few recipes. As Think Geek puts it, though, the recipes themselves differ radically from what one might find in a traditional cookbook:

A new generation of chef-chemists have risen to take back the pinch, smidgen and fistful. They understand that an acidic fluid, when mixed with sodium alginate and dropped slowly into a bath of calcium chloride solution will create wonderful little spheres that pop in your mouth like caviar. Chill an agar infused liquid in a silicon tube and now you've got spaghetti. Mix soy lecithin in sauce and whip it into a light and delicious foam. All this science is available to your next culinary project with our Molecular Cuisine Starter Kit.

While the kit is geared toward hobbyists, the chemical tools and techniques of molecular gastronomy are being used on larger scales. High-end chef Homaro Cantu, for example, believes that spreading chemical techniques to create flavors will decentralize food production and enable us to reconceptualize what food is. Put differently, he argues that flavoring techniques will allow us to produce and eat a huge variety of processed algae.

We’ve been trying to incorporate food from the green world, and started growing microalgae. You can get 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of algae per acre. It can be grown in salt or fresh water, in a whole variety of temperatures.... Let’s say you have a food printer and eight cartridges, and grow eight crops [of algae] on the roof, and that’s all you need to replicate any food product you can imagine, from mom’s apple pie to a cheeseburger with French fries. That would decentralize the food structure, and you’d know exactly where your food comes from.

Of course, the gap between a home chemistry kit and homemade algae french fries is enormous. And as interesting as Cantu's idea is, I'm not sure I totally buy into its feasibility--even in the long run. That said, I do buy into that the spread of little kitchen experiments can have long-range impacts. Indeed, as this excellent article on the microwbrewery Dogfish Head notes, the dramatic expansion of craft beers in recent years can be attributed, in large part, to early adopter home brewers pushing the envelope and creating new and unique recipes. Not only have home brewers created new products, but I think their bigger impact has been in gradually reintroducing complexity and creativity into beer, making what once seemed like experimental flavors become commonplace. Again, any major impact of molecular gastronomy is likely a ways off. But in the meantime, I'm looking forward to not just making homebrewed beer, but to experimenting with some home-based molecular gastronomy. (Found via.)