Guidance

I get a message asking me about guidance. 

And here is my answer :

In order to answer the question properly, I need to start by explaining things clearly:
1. first of all I propose to make a distinction between
- technology,
- technology
- science (of nature)

2. secondly, I propose to make a clear distinction between molecular and physical gastronomy (on more simply molecular gastronomy = science), on the one hand, and molecular cooking or cuisine on the other hand (technique) ; without forgetting synthetic that I also invented, also with the name note-by-note cuisine (also technique).

Indeed, if you have our Handbook of MG, this is said in the introduction.

By the way, as far as "sciences" are concerned, I am going to talk about them now by implying "sciences of nature", and not sciences of the human or of society.

Let us begin by returning to the first of the two distinctions: culinary activity is a technical activity that certainly has an artistic and a social component; but producing a dish is a technical gesture.

This is therefore very different from a scientific activity, in the sense of the natural sciences, which must use the "scientific method" to explore the mechanisms of phenomena.
I add without waiting that the natural sciences are not concerned by applications, especially technical applications.

In the middle, between technique and science, there is technology, the work of the engineer, who uses the results of the natural sciences to improve the technique. In English, we sometimes speak of technology and sometimes of engineering.

To arrive at the second distinction now, there is  :
- Molecular gastronomy, whose real name is molecular  and physical gastronomy, and which is science (physics, chemistry, biology...), without taking care of applications, only exploring the mechanisms of phenomena.
- Molecular cooking/cuisine is a technique: it is cooking renovated by the contributions of molecular gastronomy or by the introduction of materials from laboratories.
- these two (molecular gastronomy, on the one hand, and molecular cooking, on the other hand) differ from synthetic cooking, or note-by-note cooking, for which the question is no longer that of materials but of ingredients: instead of cooking with carrots, turnips, meat or fish, one uses pure compounds and builds dishes.

 

 

All that being said, I can now answer the email in details, and I  take it sentence by sentence

First, you tell me that you are a student "looking for a space in the vast research field of molecular gastronomy": if the term molecular gastronomy is used in your sentence, then it means that you would like to do scientific research.

You add that your background is not in cooking but in science and indeed, to do molecular gastronomy, you need to have a scientific background and certainly not a culinary, technical background.

Then you tell me that for the last 10 years you have been interested in coffee, as a consultant about fermentation methods for example: this is an exciting work; a technological work for sure, not scientific, but very interesting... and I take the opportunity to point out that in my laboratory, there was a thesis on coffee roasting: the PhD candidate, because she was heading towards the industry... and me because the preparation of coffee is accompanied by many phenomena that I wanted to explore.

Then you tell me that food and cooking are one of your passions and you tell me again that you imagine a transition to molecular gastronomy, and you ask me whether it is too late when you are 30 years old:  you might be interested to know that until I was 50, I had two lives, one in science publishing, and the other in the laboratory; I gave up science publishing at age 50 to go full time to do science in the laboratory, which I loved above all else.

By the way, I should add that even though I invent a lot of things, I do it in spite of myself, and I'm not proud of it. More exactly, if I were to be proud of something, it would only be my discoveries, and not my inventions.
Besides, for me, cooking is only a kind of pretext: it is in cooking that we see phenomena that we explore scientifically afterwards. And there is no technology involved.

I also want to point out that it is in the food industry in the broad sense that there are both jobs and decent salaries.
I understand that in your country, many of my colleagues are doing both research, which is more technological, and teaching, as well, than scientific research.

And I refer you to one of my blog posts that shows how constant the confusion is: https://hervethis.blogspot.com/2018/09/la-science-des-aliments-nest-pas-la.html
In fact, a lot of what is called food science is actually food technology and not food science.
It is interesting to observe, for example, that there are hundreds or even thousands of articles devoted to tea or coffee, but an excessively small number (if any) are concerned with the mechanism of the phenomena, i.e., the science.
The majority of the articles are interested in the composition of tea or coffee, in the ingredients, in the processes, but not in the science.

Then you mention an intention to collaborate with a starred restaurant: obviously, it will be about technology or technique and not science unless it is about communicating new, scientific information, in which case it will be about training or teaching but still not science.

By the way, one of the PhD in my lab created a company for selling consultancy (at that time, in molecular cooking), and this looks like what you intend to do. Her education in molecular gastronomy was very useful for her to do this job.

You tell me that this restaurant wants to create a "research" and "innovation" group: I warn you against using the word "research" because one can do scientific research or technological research... or artistic research; it is always research but it is not always science (= scientific research).
In short, the word research is not synonymous with science, and in any case, if the creation of such a center is at stake, then it is obviously technology or artistic research that is involved.


And here I have done the best I can. I hope that this was useful 

kind regards