The New York Times has an article Food 2.0: Chefs as Chemists, that profiles Wylie Dufresne of restaurant WD-50 in New York and his chemical approach to cooking. Some of the highlights include foie gras that is flexible enough to be tied in a knot and flavoured films made of agar-agar that he drapes over dishes. My favourite is the ‘chocolate lentils’: a mixture of pectin and ‘mole’ (a Mexican chocolate sauce) is dripped into a calcium lactate solution. The calcium reacts with pectin to a form a crunchy shell - yum!

Don’t miss the slideshow, showing some of the kit he uses as well as the food he creates.

Of course, UK readers probably already know about Heston Blumenthal, whose cooking is often branded ‘molecular gastronomy’ and has won him 3 Michelin stars. They might not know that he is an Honorary RSC Fellow and colloborated with the RSC on Kitchen Chemistry, a resource for schools.

And shoe-horning another shameless RSC plug in here, watch out next year for a series of articles on food in the journal Soft Matter!

Thanks to Gavin Armstrong for sending on the NY Times link.