Dig

This is the new-ish cuisine which takes in scientific processes and is focused on the delivery of flavor to the palette. One(taken from this NYT article featuring Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea in Chicago) of the many experiments/ideas involves ‘solid sauces’.

For some time now, Achatz has been experimenting with jellies to create “solid sauces” — thin, flavorful liquids given mass and viscosity through a variety of techniques. The sauces evolved, he explained, from a recent period using vegetable purées to accompany meats and fish. “I thought it would be interesting to turn a sauce into a purée,” he said. “To make a purée, you just stick a solid in the blender. The challenge was turning a liquid into a purée. To purée a liquid, I realized I had to turn it into a solid and then purée the solid.”To create his solids, he works with different gelling agents, from gelatin to seaweed extracts like agar and carrageen. Achatz’s first solid sauce was a yuzu fluid gel, which he made by heating the fragrant citrus juice with agar, cooling it to set, then puréeing the resulting jelly into a puddinglike sauce, which he served with sugar snap peas, yogurt and ham.

With solid sauces, Achatz explains, “flavor release” is key. Jellies are essentially flavor elements suspended in a neutral medium. Bound in their carrier matrix, the flavor molecules are relatively inaccessible to the taste buds, so the jelly is first experienced primarily as texture. At a certain temperature, different for each agent, the molecular mesh relaxes and the flavor is released. With gelatin, this occurs at body temperature; in Achatz’s Mussel Cream With Mint and Chamomile Jelly, the herbal flavor blooms in the mouth as the gelatin melts.

For many sauces, Achatz uses agar, which remains firm at body temperature; puréeing the set jelly keeps the sauce thick while allowing flavor release. The resultant liquid gel is intensely flavored but thick and glossy, like his jet black soy liquid gel, which he recently served as part of a casually deconstructed Thai salad with Kobe beef, melon and cucumber.

This all sounds cool and all. But I think this might be useful in many a sci-fi kitchen. It seems to be something a food replicator should be able to synthesize.