‘Thou shall be inventive’
Chemistry and the kitchen aren’t separate worlds anymore. Throw in a bit of artistry, and you just might incarnate today’s cutting-edge chef who uses liquid nitrogen to make an insta-ice cream, right at your restaurant table. Science and food are as married as salt and pepper. Even Benjamin Franklin’s historic experiments with oil on England’s Clapham Pond relate to the formation of mayonnaise, according to Harold McGee, New York Times food science columnist and an authority on the history of the school of cooking now referred to as molecular gastronomy. “Franklin put a half-teaspoon of oil on the shoreline and watched the wind spread it. He wanted to see what extent of the pond the oil would cover, and he found that one half-teaspoon of oil would cover a half acre of the pond,” said McGee. “His experiment is directly relevant to understanding mayonnaise making, because what you’re doing in mayonnaise making is...