Eggs-Traordinary Mole-Gas With Hervé This

Remember how Hervé This gave a seminar at the Union League Club this past Saturday? Well, Hungry Magazine was there, soaking in all the glory. For those of you with short attention spans (especially today), This is the godfather of mole-gas, and he has been tinkering with the chemical and physical properties of food since the 80s. Among This’s early discoveries - a method for creating a cubic meter of meringue from one egg. Holy crap! What would the chickens think? His demonstration at the seminar was also egg-related: he whipped up, and then microwaved, some mayonnaise, evaporating the water and creating a mayonnaise cake. Just like that. And one can imagine frying it in strips, and putting it on bread with liquid bacon with tomato foam and lettuce gel, and…so forth. This gives seminars like this every month in Paris, for free, all in the name of advancing culinary science; incroyable! His new thing is a theory of “culinary constructivism,” which you can (try) to read about on his website: in a post-Derrida world, it is incumbent upon us to use the techniques of mole-gas to make food that’s interesting and enjoyable, not just to disassemble food into its componenents, is what we believe he’s striving toward (our French is a bit rusty). It is empty, he implies, to simply be virtuosic, using the mole-gas for a “wow” factor and little else. We think this commitment to cause is admirable, and particularly French. We’re also going to try microwaving mayonnaise when we get home.

Honey, There’s a Scientist in the Kitchen [Hungry Magazine]

[Photo: Khymos]

Eggs-Traordinary Mole-Gas With Hervé This