Molecular Gastronomy is the love child of cooking and science. Using its principles, you can produce chemical reactions with edible ingredients and create some pretty amazing results. Here's how it works and a few ideas to put it into practice.


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What is it?


Wikipedia offers a concise, specific definition of molecular gastronomy:

Molecular gastronomy is a discipline practiced by both scientists and food professionals that studies the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking. Molecular gastronomy seeks to investigate and explain the chemical reasons behind the transformation of ingredients, as well as the social, artistic and technical components of culinary and gastronomic phenomena in general.

Ferran Adrià generally gets the credit for fathering the movement, but Nicholas Kurti and Hervé This (a physicist and chemist, respectively) coined the term when starting a number of workshops to explore the science behind cooking. The reason Adrià is often credited with molecular gastronomy, even though he doesn't even believe it's a real term, is because he's done some pretty awesome things in the kitchen with the aid of science. We're going to take a look at a couple of neat ideas that have sprung from this movement, ranging from simple to complex.




What can I do with it?




A lot of seemingly strange but ultimately awesome results can be produced from techniques associated with molecular gastronomy. Let's take a look at a few recipes that make use of these different methods.

Foams

One of the staples of molecular gastronomy is foam. It's actually pretty easy to create a flavor-infused foam with cold water, lecithin (which stabilizes cold liquids), relevant flavors, and a hand blender.


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Pearls

The idea behind pearls is to capture a liquid flavor inside a tiny little pearl-like ball. This is generally done with pureed vegetables, and eating the result is a pretty unusual, fun, and neat experience. Watching the process is pretty cool, as it involves squirting little drops of a puree mixed with brown algaen into a calcium chloride formula and seeing a skin form around them. After a moment, you can fish out all the little vegetable pearls and add them to your dish.


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Here's how to do it with cantaloupe and make a pretty crazy cantaloupe shake:




More Daring Ideas

Molecular gastronomy can get pretty complex pretty quickly, and even a little bit dangerous. One you probably shouldn't try at home is making iced cream with fruit juice and liquid nitrogen. Here's how it works with watermelons:

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Got any interesting molecular gastronomy recipes or experiments of your own? Let's hear 'em in the comments (and feel free to share any awesome accompanying images, too)!