Taking stock of new flavours (original) (raw)

Nature volume 400, pages 17–18 (1999) Cite this article

What's in a taste? Chemists can isolate the components of flavours, and biologists have begun to explain how our bodies enjoy them, but cookery will remain more art than science for a while yet.

Thirty years ago, in a celebrated Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution entitled “The Physicist in the Kitchen”, Nicholas Kurti deplored the scientific neglect of cooking, an “insufficiently dignified” activity that nevertheless nourishes and gives daily pleasure to much of humankind. “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.”1 In May, at the fourth meetingFootnote 1of a gastrophysical workshop founded by Kurti and named in his memory, scientists and chefs gathered to explore what goes on inside food and its consumers to generate the all-important sensation of flavour.

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Figure 1: The Cook, an engraving by Hubert François Gravelot.

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Notes

  1. * International Workshop on Molecular Gastronomy N. Kurti, Erice, Sicily, 6-10 May 1999.

References

  1. Kurti, N. Proc. R. Inst. G. Br. 42, 451–467 (1969).
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  2. Hoon, M. A. et al. Cell 96, 541–551 (1999).
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  3. Wheaton, B. Savoring the Past 198 (Univ. Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1983).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, and The Curious Cook (Scribner, Collier), 838 La Jennifer Way, Palo Alto, 94306, California, USA
    Harold McGee

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McGee, H. Taking stock of new flavours.Nature 400, 17–18 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/21775

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