Aim Of Molecular Gastronomy Media Essay

Aim Of Molecular Gastronomy Media Essay The art of cooking is as old as humanity and cooking is such an important part of our world which obviously needs scientific attention. Although science has contributed to food safety, hygiene and nutritional aspects, little has been done towards innovation and invention of new dishes. The ancient Greek words, gastro means stomach and nomos means law, collectively termed as gastronomy, which in contemporary hospitality industry means food and culture. It generally refers to the study of relationship between food and culture with interdisciplinary approaches. This literature attempts to explain molecular gastronomy, its origin and evolution, along with its relevance and contributions to the contemporary hospitality industry. Cooking and gastronomy Even though molecular gastronomy has attracted media attention for quite a while, still there is confusion about the true meaning of the term. To explain this, cooking and gastronomy has to be distinguished first. Cooking is the preparation of raw food into edible, whereas gastronomy is the knowledge of whatever concerns man’s nourishment. Gastronomy is about chemical and physical transformation behind the preparation of any food, for example, the reason behind egg white puffs up when whipped or mayonnaise becomes firm. (This, 2006). According to HerveThis, the science of food is not new but dates back to second century BC, when preparation of meat stock-the aqueous solution obtained by thermal processing of animal tissues in water-has been of great interest. Since then, scientists have been interested in food and cooking which gave way to molecular gastronomy. If culinary history is scrutinised, it will be clear that, initially food experts studied the culinary science to steer clear of blind assumptions and unscientific ways of cooking. But today, the science of food has reached its extreme in the form of molecular gastronomy, which chemically examines the food and cooking in its molecular level to give a new face for cooking and change the total concept of commercial cooking in near future. Molecular gastronomy The scientific discipline dedicated to culinary industry and to gastronomical phenomena in general has been called ‘molecular gastronomy’ the late Nicholas Kurti and HerveThis (This, 2005). Molecular gastronomy can also be defined as a field that attempts to improve the culinary techniques through understanding the composition and chemical transformations occurring in food during the process of cooking (Ankeny, Year Unknown). Gastronomy or molecular gastronomy is the science just like any other science in the world, which studies the cause and effect of anything that happens during cooking including the structural difference in same cooking ingredients of different quality, which have an effect on the final product. If we can answer the question, we can correct a mistake, use this knowledge to improve the cooking process or even invent new dishes or ways to prepare food. For example, if we know that when an egg is cooked, water evaporates, the proteins denature and polymerize to enclose water, we can even use substitute methods to cook it, like adding alcohol to it, which denature the egg proteins and gives the same result. Molecular gastronomy also deals with the study of human senses and perception of taste, aroma, texture and temperature, in short, the sensory science known as chemesthesis (berham et. al, 2010). It studies the perception of senses in molecular level in order to understand how different dishes are perceived as awful, average, good or delicious, when they are made of similar ingredients. Although chemesthesis of human beings are the same, people of different genre appreciates different types of food. For example westerner’s cooking style is entirely different from Asians, and while Asians appreciate spicy food, most westerners do not.