I am grateful

Let's begin by saying that I did not get any money from the flavouring industry.

In 1994, I created synthetic cooking, now known as "note by note cooking".

Why the nickname? Because of the following musical analogy.

A couple of centuries ago, people played the violin or the flute. When you lay your bow on the strings of a violin, you get a note — the sound of the violin.
And a couple of centuries ago, people cooked with ingredients. They used carrots, turnips, meats, fish… When you put a carrot into a saucepan, what you get is the taste of the carrot. There is a direct analogy between the sound of a musical note and the taste of carrot.

 One century ago, scientists analyzed sounds and broke them down into elementary sound waves, every sound being comprised of fundamental and harmonics.
At the same period, chemists analysed food ingredients and found out that they were comprised of compounds (water, lipids, proteins, etc.). The parallel is striking.

Fifty years ago, in order to make synthetic music, you needed a big roomful of computers, whereas now you can buy a synthesiser for a child in a toy shop for a few euros.
But the equivalent for food was nowhere to be found!

So, in 1994, I decided to work on that analogy. Since food ingredients were made of compounds, I would use those compounds to prepare dishes.
It should really be called “synthetic cuisine”, but that would scare people away, so I brought forward the artistic side to name the concept, and Note to Note it was.

When I decided to organize an international competition around Note to Note Cuisine, I turned to Éric Angelini (Mane Company) for help. He proposed a partnership, awarding prizes…
Then a miracle happened, which I have never been able to explain. I received a box from Mane SA. It contained about fifteen preparations, each one a pure component in a food solvent, and they could be used like pepper, salt, or curry powder…
I got twenty of these boxes. I had to name the preparations, and just as there is Chanel n°5, there was Note to Note n°1, n°2, n°3…

Every other month, I went to various countries with the double aim of developing molecular gastronomy in universities and offering the box to the greatest chefs — Pierre Gagnaire, Philippe Conticini, Heston Blumenthal… — so that they could experiment with it.

Jean Mane gave away these boxes; he refused to sell them. That was amazing. Selling them wasn’t part of his plan, he only meant to help me to develop my project. So I am extremely grateful to him for having supported me at that crucial stage of the building of my Cuisine Note à Note.

Later Michael Pontif, a young French chemist, created a company called Iqemusu, in order to sell the same kind of products.

And Note by Note cooking is spreading, thanks to these people : thank you !