Paris is sweltering, freakishly hot for an early June morning, and like much of the old city, the lab occupied by Hervé This at the Collège de France, a stone's throw from the venerable Sorbonne, has no air-conditioning. As usual, however, This—pronounced "tiss"—looks dapper in a black suit and one of the impeccable white collarless shirts that have become his trademark. A full day lies ahead in his lab, he says, but first we must shop. He bounds to his feet, ditches his jacket, and descends to the stifling street below, proceeds down a cobbled alley, crosses the boulevard Saint-Michel, rounds a corner, and dives into the local supermarché. He emerges with two dozen eggs and a cold brick of Normandy butter, his face crinkling into a grin. "For our experiments!" he announces. He has yet to break a sweat.
This is head of the molecular gastronomy group in the Collège de France's Laboratory for the Chemistry of Molecular Interactions. That's a mouthful to describe a lab that studies something simple: how the process of cooking changes the structure and taste of food. Nonetheless, molecular gastronomy marks the cutting edge of epicurism these days. Anyone who wields a saucepan is doing chemistry and physics, yet how many of us actually know what's going on in there? Molecular gastronomy aims to apply the piercing clarity of science to the culinary arts. Already in France, which takes the pleasures of the table seriously, molecular gastronomy is an officially recognized, government-funded science.
"Why molecular gastronomy?" asks This, heading off a question he's been asked many times before. "It sounds a little pompous, no? Why not . . . molecular cooking?" Easy, he replies. Cooking aims to produce a dish; it is a craft, a technique. Gastronomy is knowledge, albeit knowledge that can improve your cooking and your appreciation of it. Gastronomy is the science of anything to do with human nourishment, says This, more or less quoting Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, France's great food philosopher. Writing in 1825, Brillat-Savarin envisaged a discipline that would meld the physics and chemistry of food and cookery with the physiology of eating and especially with the glorious, sensual world of taste.
The "molecular" preface was added in the late 1980s by This and his late colleague, Nicholas Kurti, to evoke the chemical units that make up the water, fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and other compounds in food. Molecular had a dynamic, modern ring to it, perfect for ushering gastronomy into a new era. Besides, molecular gastronomy sounds so much more fun, sophisticated, and cultured than plain old "food science," a field with which it somewhat overlaps but that is largely geared to the mass-market needs of the food industry.
