MG in Copenhagen

(Thorvald Pedersen)

Now let me come to my own credentials as far as Molecular Gastronomy is

concerned. They fall in two parts primarily distinguished by their target groups and
the corresponding appropriate wordings:

Monthly articles (some 130 since 1988) in the periodical Dansk Kemi (Danish
Chemistry), together with numerous underlying experiments in the kitchen and/or the
lab. - I have two protocols from the time in the mid-nineties when I experimented
with bread-baking. [86 of the articles covering 1988-1999 were published as a book
in 2000]. The target group consists of chemists. They are fellow chemists interested
in food on an amateur basis, chemistry teachers in high school and in other schools.
My most recent book "Kemien bag gastronomien" (The Chemistry of Gastronomy,
published in 2002, henceforth abbreviated to CoG) came about because another
publisher asked me if I would be willing and able to write a textbook meant for a
broader audience. I was willing enough but was I able? I was close to giving up on
the project in 2001, but the publisher got me over a hurdle. The target group covered
by the term "broader audience" covers people seriously if not necessarily
professionally interested in cooking. I do not see the food industry in the target group.
Their problems are of a different nature than the topics dealt with in the book and is
properly dealt with in "Food Chemistry" which is already strongly represented at this
university. I think the book qualifies as a Molecular Gastronomy textbook. It is in
many ways similar to Peter Barhams book "The Science of Cooking", which came a
year before mine - and there has been no cheating. Peter being a physicist has the
point of view of a physicist while I have the point of view of a chemist. The level of
the two books is comparable, except that my book has a technical lexicon at the end
for the benefit of readers with some chemical background

Please have another look at the definition of MG that I came up with in the
programme after having found the definition of "Gastronomy" in "The Oxford
Learned Dictionary":

Art and science of choosing, preparing and eating good food.

I did not choose a definition in English just because we were going to speak English
today. I chose it because I was unable to find a similarly succinct definition in Danish
Encyclopediae nor in the Danish Lexicon of Gastronomy ("Gastrolex") published by
the Danish Academy of Gastronomy. In the Danish sources the word "science" (its
Danish equivalent being "videnskab") simply does not occur. I must say about the
"Gastrolex" though that it does a good job in explaining that gastronomy has become

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more democratic, it is no longer concerned with "the food and eating of the rich and
powerful" but more with "quality eating" in general.
I shall now consider the three components of the definition separately in the light of
my own writings

i A&S of choosing,
ii A&S of preparing
iii A&S of eating good food

In CoG - my book - I devote 9 chapters to the raw materials we use in the kitchen.
The first is about

Bread-baking.
i A&S of choosing,
What we have to choose is primarily the flour and the leavening agent. So what are
the scientific aspects of choosing flour, and are there relevant molecular aspects to
address in this connection? Of science in general there is the biological/anatomical
aspects of the various grains. To molecular science belongs the properties of the
protein part of wheat in particular. Wheat has the potential for the formation leavened
breads because it contains the so-called gluten forming proteins gliadin and glutenin,
so for the subsequent leavening to be successful we should go for so-called "strong"
flours. In Denmark the choice is limited. The COOP chain sells a Safir EXTRA
wheat flour for bread baking. It has a higher gluten protein content than ordinary
flour. The stated content is 12% protein due to the mixing of foreign wheat into
Danish (where normal all-purpose flour has 8%?? the percentage in Danish wheat). It
would be desirable if we could be informed about the nature of the protein. Why not
have a booklet available with more MG-information? Should the flour be organic?
"Organic" or not has no influence on the baking properties except that if is Danish
organic then the gluten proteins are present in smaller proportion. If you can get it
straight out of the mill the flour is fresher but its taste degrades faster because it
usually contains unsaturated fat from the germ which is removed in commercial
Danish flours. The mentioned flour contains E300 “flour improving agent”. E300 is
ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and it improves the raising capability of the flour (I discuss
the mechanism later on). If it was not there I would add half a tablet of vitamin C to
the dough for a 1,6 kg loaf (1 kg flour).
Choosing leavening agent is most often the choice between yeast - which is pure
Saccharomyses cerevisia or sour dough. Sour dough is prepared by letting a batter go
sour. It is by nature not pure because a number of sour-tolerant yeasts and bacteria –
mostly Lactobacillus species – present on the flour particles act at the same time. The
sour therefore will be different from time to time, which you can either consider a

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charm or a nuisance. To make systematic experiments (as I did) my choice would be
yeast (and a big sack of flour to ensure that the flour would also be the same).
Biga is much used in Italian bread-making. A biga is a fore-dough obtained by taking
away up to 1/2 of a dough and adding flour and water to it next day. It is by nature
sour if not quite as sour as a sour dough . The sour dough's give breads with a sour
taste owing to lactic and acetic acid.
Obviously the choosing involves craftsmanship (i.e. Arts) as well as science. When
it comes to sour dough’s I will say that craftsmanship prevails.

ii A&S of preparing
I shall not bore you with all the well-known details about the baking of a loaf, but
come directly to the most relevant MG-aspects.
The raising of the dough proceeds by the consumption – by the yeast – of the
fermentable sugars in the dough (mono- and disaccharides). The CO2 developed
during this fermentation is trapped in the gluten network which can be seen as a
network of glutenine strands where gliadin is “blocking the wholes in the network”
This gluten complex is developed during the kneading and is strengthened in
proportion to the energy put into the kneading (measurements of volume of the loaf
as a function of the energy put into the kneading process measured as the time of
kneading times the wattage of the kneading machine). The strength of the network
depends on the properties of the proteins. All the common amino acids are present in
the protein – notably glutamine which got its name from gluten – and cystein. 2
cystein molecules can couple among themselves (coupling strands together) to form
cystine complexes. This leads to a stronger glutenin network. An enzyme called
“glutathione” acts to split the cystin complexes as soon as the dough has been laid up.
It acts like virus attac. Ascorbic acid – the additive I mwn tioned above – acts by
preventing this process through inactivating the glutathione.
The bubbles form primarily by CO2 seeping into air-bubbles already present due to
air becoming incorporated during the kneading – much air entailing smaller bubbles
in the loaf.
After the first raising the loaf is deflated. This leads to a certain redistribution of the
nutrients (sugars) and a fresh start for the yeast. Aroma formation depends on the
total raising time (over-night, socalled long-time raising under cold storage is
beneficial in this regard).
A steaming of the loaf in the beginning of the baking improves the final crust by
pasting the starch grains in the surface.
The colour of the final crust is formed by a mix of caramelization and Maillard
reactions. This colour formation takes place at 150 C and above.

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I shall consider the eating/tasting aspects (iii A&S of eating) in more general terms
below, so let me proceed to one more example, which is taken from another of the 9
chapters, namely the chapters (12) “Fruit, vegetables and spices” and (20) about the
same topic but containing recipes relating to (12) The choice of item is usually
dictated by the recipe and is on the whole an Arts-exercise like how do you feel
whether the avocado is ready or not, or the pineapple. Potatoes are a little bit tricky
since you might either want them “waxy” or “mealy” – we do not even have Danish
words for these concepts which tells you whether or not the potato is good for
mashing or baking or should just be cooked. On the whole the information level is
low on potatoes in Denmark!
So let me come to a number of examples of ii A&S of preparing, concentrating
again on the MG-aspects. I shall start from the recipe and spell out the comments
given for each in recipe.

Green asparagus after Shirley Corriher

Boumiano after Jane Grigson

Chou rouge à la Limousine after Julia Child

Olie med krydderurter (Spiced oils)

Sorbetta di Mela Verde after Marcella Hazan

Finally let me now return to iii A&S of eating good food from a general point of view.
I devote (Ch. 6, 25 pages) of CoG – the book – to the sensory aspects of foods. Let
me begin with a quotation from Coultates “Food – The Chemistry of its components”

“However much nutritionists and ‘health food’ enthusiasts may wish otherwise, it
is the flavour and appearance of food rather than its vitamin contents that win the
compliments at the dinner table”

From this quotation I pick the word “flavour”, which I want to dwell upon for while.
In modern sensory science flavour is taken to encompass

1) taste,
2) smell
3) trigeminal impressions.

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 Only the third category needs a little explanation. Most relevantly in the tongue we
find the nerve endings of the trigeminal nerve. (But also in the eye-region and around
the lips). It transmits pain-like impressions like those stemming from hot things –
including hot chilies, cold things – including peppermint, fractured things – like
crystals in an ice or the crisp crust of the newly baked bread etc. and transmits them
to the brain directly (i.e. outside the nerves transmitting taste and smell information).
It is becoming more and more acknowledged that flavour is the key concept in
connection with tasting. When I recently visited The Fat Duck (Blumenthals 3-star
restaurant in Bray near London) I heard for the first time about his “Flavour-pairing
principle” which he used as his guide when composing new combinations of
ingredients. To take one example. I was served the odd combination of a “Pommery
mustard grain ice cream with a read cabbage gazpacho”. Apart from the very
appetizing appearance of a yellowish ice-cream with small spots of mustard there was
this very intensely violet gazpacho one could not avoid asking: “What is going on
here, why this unusual combination”. I was told by Blumenthal that it was based on
his Flavour profile-pairing principle. The ingredients that tend to dominate the taste
impression are called “mustard oils” because they were first located in mustard. They
are abundant in all crucifera-species, cabbage being one example. (Anders Kjær – a
Danish chemist, who is still alive at 85 – found many of these mustard oils. They
share a sharp (Trigeminal!) flavour. Similar reasoning led him to pair Iranian caviar
with white chocolate – which were also on my menu.
Sensory scientists are becoming increasingly interested in the processes taking
place in the brain upon eating and use NMR-scanning (fMRI) and other
neurophysiological methods to investigate them. It turns out that a surprisingly large
number of areas in the human brain are activated when we eat. Smell, taste and
trigeminal stimulation all have separate areas devoted to represent what we perceive.
At higher levels in the brain (f.ex. the socalled orbitofrontal cortex), information from
the different sensory systems come together and activity in these areas represent
affective properties of what we eat, i.e. whether we like a food or not.
Hedonic properties of foods seem to be extracted separately from the more basic
sensations eating gives rise to. A better understanding of the basic processes in the
brain responsible for the different sensations and hedonic experiences have great
applicability in gastronomical composition.
The representations of preferences for foods are highly influenced by whether we are
hungry and drive motivation to eat more of the same or another kind of food or
whether the meal is terminated. The use of these modern, objective, methods will
lead to a better understanding of food choice in terms of basic neurobiological
processes and will also contribute to establish relationships between sensory
properties of foods and nutritional processes in the brain and the gastrointestinal
system.

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Work in this area has demonstrated how appetitive and other nutritional processes are
closely intertwined with sensory and hedonic properties of foods. A separation of
eating behaviour into purely ‘nutritive’ aspects and purely hedonic rewards is
misguided and will not bring much understanding of normal eating behaviour. This is
not to claim that modern sensory physiological techniques (fMRI and other) cannot
be used to investigate in a rational way, gastronomical systems and guidelines like
Blumenthal’s “Flavour profile-pairing principle”. A close collaboration between
gastronomers and sensory physiologists will probably produce much new knowledge
which will benefit both the hedonic aspects of eating as well as the more health-
related ones.
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