Eggs bacon chips beans for the 21st century

Slide 1: 21st century eggs, bacon, chips and beans Chris Heathcote interesting2007

Slide 2: Hello. I like food. A lot. I want to make things taste better. Some of this involves some chemistry.

Slide 3: (Western) food We’ve conquered pretty much every taste from around the world. We’ve pushed current techniques, textures and combinations as far as possible. How can we make things taste more of themselves?

Slide 4: Deconstruction We can deconstruct ingredients into flavours and textures. Memories. Some ingredients are about the idea or preparations behind it.

Slide 5: Reconstruction Then we can put them together in new combinations. Food = taste + texture + presentation.

Slide 6: An example

Slide 7: EBC B

Slide 8: My notes.

Slide 9: Eggs Eggs are difficult. Hard to amplify the flavour, often used for texture changes. (if anything, an egg yolk sauce). But what about the idea of an egg?

Slide 10: Deconstructing eggs Yolk, white, shell. Raw, whipped whites, meringue, boiled, fried, poached, scrambled, omelette.

Slide 12: Cyberegg

Slide 13: El Bulli

Slide 14: WD50

Slide 15: Bacon Bacon: Fat, protein. Fried.

Slide 16: Bacon Bacon powder, bacon jelly, bacon grease, bacon jam, bacon toast, bacon leather, bacon air, bacon crisp.

Slide 17: Powders Fat + maltodextrin. Ground crispy bacon.

Slide 18: Chips Taste: potato, fat. Texture: crispy/fluffy.

Slide 19: Potato Potato bread, pommes puree, potato crisp, fried potato slice, mash, potato foam.

Slide 20: Foams Dairy + liquid + Nitrous oxide = foam.

Slide 21: Beans Beans meanz Heinz. (I don’t really like beans). Where is the taste? Mainly in the juice. (it tastes of tomato soup).

Slide 22: Spherification Invented by the food processing industry. Discovered by Ferran Adria. Calcium salt + sodium alginate = jelly.

Slide 23: Inverse spherification Flavoured liquid + calcium gluconate and calcium lactate + xanthan gum. Bath of water + sodium alginate + sodium citrate. “Poach”.

Slide 24: Reconstructed EBCB Potato “white” + baked bean “yolk”. Bacon “salt and pepper”.

Slide 25: Forkbot & thanks Me: chris@anti-mega.com Food: forkbot.org (soon, soon) Chemicals: texturas.com, infusions4chefs.co.uk Books: El Bulli cookbooks, Ferran Adria et al Egg, Lyndsay & Patrick Mikanowski Websites: Hungry in Hogtown Egullet Ideas in Food