Salt doesn’t dissolve in oil, silly

Herve364 Rob Mifsud talks to Hervé This, in The Globe and Mail:

Trained as a physical chemist, Dr. This is the godfather of molecular gastronomy, the emerging discipline of understanding the physical and chemical structure of food and the scientific processes of cooking.

Naysayers accuse him of tarnishing culinary traditions, but to Michelin three-star chefs such as Spain’s Ferran Adria and Paris’s Pierre Gagnaire, he’s a guru. Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor and Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking, the first of his books to be released in English, set out to make kitchen science accessible to the lay cook. We talked to him about distilling countless napkins’ worth of experimental results into practical advice on how to prepare meltingly tender meat and why all you need is a good oven.

The term “molecular gastronomy” is now associated with chefs like Ferran Adria, but you disagree with that usage. Why?

They are doing molecular cooking. The truth is that molecular gastronomy is science, molecular cooking is cooking, and chefs are not scientists.

What equipment do you consider essential for home cooks?

A good oven, certainly. Induction is fine, because induction is more efficient than a gas stove. That’s all.