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vendredi 2 mars 2018

Questions About Note by Note Cooking

How does note by note cooking work?
To say it in one sentence: note by note cooking means making dishes from ingredients that are pure compounds (such as water, triglycerides, proteins, lipids, phenolics, colorants, odorants compounds, taste compounds, vitamins, oligo-elements).

In order to understand better, a comparison with synthetic music is helpful.
Indeed, two centuries ago, music was performed using traditional instruments, and cooking was using traditional ingredients. Then one century ago, physicists began analyzing sounds into pure waves, as chemists were analyzing food into pure compounds. About 50 years ago, one room full of computers was used to synthesize music from pure waves, but today a synthesizer costs only 20 euros in a shop for children. For food? Pure compounds are cheap, and it's easy to make synthetic food. This is note by note cooking.


You have said in the future we won't cook with fruit, vegetables or meat, but note by note with pure compounds. Why?
I am not sure that I would say that exactly... and I don't have crystal ball!
But I say that fruits and vegetables are fragile physical-chemical systems, full of water, so that they are expansive to transport (transporting water!), and they are easily damaged.
In order to reduce spoilage, it would be useful to extract water from plant tissues at the farm, so that only "dry" nutrients would be transported, without cold systems (expansive, energy consuming, bad gases for the climate).
This would also have the advantage of making the prices more regular, because of the possibility of storage.
And of course, the plants needed to produce sugars, lipids, amino-acids and proteins, etc.  would not be the traditional ones.
But instead of saying that there would be no carrots, I would say that as for music, there will  probably be traditional as well as new food ingredients.



How can the industry prepare for note by note cooking? Particularly suppliers, manufacturers, supermarkets and chefs?
Today, we observe the creation of small companies selling products for note by note cooking, but indeed this is one of my old goals: selling additives, odorant compounds, etc. to anybody. Just as gelatin was introduced in supermarkets and vanillin preparations, pure compounds for note by note cooking can be sold there.
Indeed I am confident because having introduced gelling agents from algae in the food sector, I see them now in supermarkets. The same for some tools such as siphons or low temperature cooking.
For note by note cooking, it will follow the same process.


How can you see note by note cooking changing the way we make and sell food?
Indeed note by note cooking done as it is done today is probably too difficult for the public, just as the first synthesizers were to complex, and only for specialists. But music companies made simpler synthesizers for children, so that today anybody can use them.
I have the feeling that food companies have an opportunity to create tools for cooking (3D printing systems, for example), but also "kits", instead of pure compounds.


What new dishes could be created through this cooking?
Note by note cooking is cooking, not producing new ingredients. It creates new dishes (second part of the question). And here, the possibilities are infinite: using note by note cooking, you can create EVERYTHING! The shape you want, the consistencies you want, the colors you want, the odor you want, the number of calories you decide, etc.



Do you think more unusual ingredients could become more accepted (like algae for example) if note by note cooking is introduced?
It is a hope, and a goal. I hate the idea that additives are only for companies. Either such compounds are useful, and the public should have it, or they are not, and the industry should not use them. The same for odorant compounds, or "flavourings".
And I want to give the public the possibility to decide and innovate. Consider, for example, a flavourings with a "strawberry flavour". This steals from the chef the possibility to decide for the flavour of the dishes that he or she is creating. And this is why, for odors, I want pure odorant compounds being sold (dissolved in oil, for example), so that the creator can decide.
 By the way, I analyze that the public fear of additives and other products is partly due to the fact that it cannot buy it and use it in home kitchens.



What problems in the world could note by note cooking tackle? Is it expensive?
Food security, by fighting spoilage
Energy savings: transportation and cold techniques
Water savings in arid countries
Making prices even
Allergies
Quantity of calories
Making food from unedible plants (by fractionation, keeping only the good compounds)

No, it's not expensive: you can buy plant proteins by tons, for example, and odorant compounds are very cheap, because a pure bottle of one of them is about 10 euros... and you have to dissolve by one billion, often.