Sunday, March 15, 2009

Chemists and Food

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Chairman Bill asks: "My partner is a biochemist and maintains that if you're a half decent chemist, then you understand food and should be a natural cook (she is the best cook I've ever come across)." and "If chemistry was a compulsory subject at school, would people be more likely to tackle cooking?"

Well, my interests include chemistry and art. I take the view that cooking is where the two overlap. To my mind, art is the more important of the two - everything hinges on presentation.

To that end I only use white plates.
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7 comments:

  1. Would you care to comment on The Fat Duck interpretation of quantum chemistry.

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  2. Lee - just to illuminate; The Fat Duck is a 3 star Michelin restaurant in the UK run by Heston Blumenthal, who is renowned for using the principles of chemistry in his menu design.

    Unfortunately he had to close down for a couple of weeks due to an outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea, although the health inspectors gave his place the all clear.

    He's very famous for his weird menus.

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  3. Ah! Like El Bulli in Spain. Gotcha.

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  4. Exactly! I'm surprised his fame has not spread to the antipodes. He has a Wiki page, and TV programmes, etc.

    Egg & bacon ice cream is one of his things.

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  5. Sounds like the British cuisine has actually degraded from the old Monty Python "Spam,spam, spam and spam" days.

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  6. I don't agree with the white plates, but art has room for us all!

    Years ago I taught cooking for a couple of years, and my focus was entirely on the chemistry, not the recipes. If someone understands the chemistry, the art/recipe is free to follow.

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  7. Uncle Hugh has this thing for white plates too. I like Heston, he is one of my heroes. He cooks weird stuff. Dogs like weird, and vomit!

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