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…show more content… Nevertheless, there are many chefs and food critics that oppose this new gastronomic movement because it goes against what they think food should be. After understating that molecular gastronomy really refers to the study of the physical and chemical processes involved in cooking, and not only the incorporation of chemical products in cooking, I believe that it is a completely viable gastronomic movement as long as the purpose of eating, which is to gain energy and nutrients, is not