Note-by-note cuisine can boost food security: Herve This

Pierre Gagnaire and Herve This

A Note-by-Note meringue dish called ‘Wind Crystals.’ Made from protein, water, egg white and flavoring.

But note-by-note cooking doesn’t seek to simply recreate existing dishes, it wants to invent new edible items.

“Science is so powerful that I can make one new food every month for 20 years,” This told CNBC in Singapore. Because most ingredients possess a variety of compounds, there are an infinite number of chemical combinations to invent new dishes, he explained.

The 63 year-old turned to music for a comparison: “In old times, people played the violin and now, we make electronic music with synthesizers but the synthesizer doesn’t aim to recreate a violin sound, it makes another sound.”

To the layperson, note-by-note cuisine seems similiar to molecular gastronomy, in which chefs use scientific processes such as specification to transform traditional ingredients. But that’s not the case, according to This, who says the note-by-note method is entirely different because it relies solely on chemicals while still using classic and molecular cooking techniques.

Ultimately, he wants households to replace spice racks with cupboards of glucose, piperine, amylose, tartaric acid and other compounds that he hopes will eventually be available in supermarkets.