For some people, puff pastry is something they take time to carefully make by hand, to result in the flakiest of pastries. For others, it is something that comes folded and frozen in a box, preferably made with butter only but not always. For others still, puff pastry can be summarized as (S1/S2)(((W/O)/S) (S1/S2)729 — French scientist Hervé This’ formula for the dough. This, who holds the only doctoral degree in molecular gastronomy in the world, works in a lab funded by the French government rather than in a restaurant kitchen, but his work is closely followed by chefs who are interested in improving upon classic dishes by understanding the processes that take place when manipulating ingredients and techniques. Some of these experiments include studying how many gallons of mayonnaise can be produced with a single egg yolk, or what should be added to water to cook a perfect batch of pasta, for example.

Chefs’ preoccupation with the scientific aspect of food and cooking is nothing new: “When I give a talk on the state of cooking today,” said Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, “I point out that you can find books on the chemistry of food and cooking that go back centuries. The idea that it is something new is just an indication of how short our memory is.”

However, it is over the last two to three years that this experimental approach to cooking has received increasing media attention. The opening of Grant Archatz’s restaurant Alinea in Chicago in early 2005 was extensively documented before the first meal — with dishes as deceptively named as PB&J, which consists of peeled grapes on the stem with a peanut butter coating, wrapped in brioche and broiled — was even served, for example. Also in Chicago, Homaro Cantu’s technological explorations at his year-old Moto have attracted the attention of NASA for example, with whom Cantu now has a contract for space-ready food. In addition to his restaurant, Cantu launched Cantu Designs, which uses some of his patent-pending technology for applications ranging from tableware to pharmaceuticals.

José Andres put Washington D.C. on this explosive culinary map with the tasting dinners offered at his 12-seat Minibar, one of his many restaurants in the capital. In and around New York, experimental cooking appears in the kitchen of WD-50, for example, or in Will Goldfarb’s creations at Room 4 Dessert and James George Sarkar’s dishes at Venue in Hoboken. In Europe, Heston Blumenthal works out of London, while Pierre Gagnaire closely collaborates with This in Paris for monthly experiments that result in him serving dishes such as the Faraday of Lobster, named after the 19th century physical chemist Michael Faraday.

The patron saint of them all is Ferran Adrià, of El Bulli outside of Barcelona in Spain, who has been experimenting with his cooking since the early 1990s. While food adventurers have long followed his work, it is only over the last five or so years that his restaurant has become a destination for foodies the world over. Accomplished chefs take time off to go apprentice with him for free, and his name adds much value to many a restaurant opening’s press release.

Professor This describes the principles of molecular gastronomy, which “have changed because some clarification was needed,” as exploring first the “love component of cooking,” second its art component, and third its technical component. This last step is further divided into two “subobjectives”: shaping the “definitions” offered by recipes, such as defining the meaning of cooking, and collecting and testing what This calls culinary “precisions,” i.e. old wife tales and other dictums.

The scientist’s preferred appellation for this culinary style is not in favor everywhere. Per Se and French Laundry chef Thomas Keller said that molecular gastronomy is a label coined by the media. He prefers to call it — which is not reflected in his kitchens — contemporary cuisine. “I think it’s an unfortunate term,” McGee said. “It doesn’t really describe accurately what people are doing or what their approach is. A lot of the people doing cooking of that type don’t like to be associated with that term.”

“ These chefs are right,” said This. “They do not do molecular gastronomy, because molecular gastronomy is science, not cooking. Some can apply the results of molecular gastronomy, some just change the ingredients, methods or tools, and it's only modernization of culinary techniques.”

But Molecular Gastronomy is the English title of This’ first translated work and as such, the term stands the chance to be used even more broadly, even if not with its true meaning. Columbia University Press, the book’s publisher, has had to return to print twice within the first two months of the volume’s North American release, speaking to the demand for material on scientifically based cooking.

Cantu, who has created an edible paper on which he prints anything from sushi to the evening’s menu to make for an intellectually awakening first course, calls what he does postmodern cuisine, “the art of taking something old and making it new,” he said. “Our food got so strange at one point that we decided to make old things new again, to give them flavors that they had before.”

“ That term has been more of a label,” said Sarkar, chef and owner of Venue in Hoboken, New Jersey. “We try to think of ourselves as a progressive American restaurant. For some reason, restaurants like mine, Alinea, El Bulli, have gotten that label. Because of the ingredients we use, such as xantan gum, lecithin, alginate.”

Some chefs also question the soundness of manipulating food to the extent that cooking no longer has much to do with the process. During a recent lecture by This at the Institute of Culinary Education, Colin Alevras, chef and owner of the Tasting Room, a New York restaurant known for its farmers’ market-inspired cuisine, asked This what this meant people were actually ingesting. This, Cantu, and Sarkar are unanimous in responding that there is nothing unnatural in dishes that have undergone a more complex process than what most cooks and diners are used to, and that ingredients such as gums and alginate, which are used as stabilizers, for example, are all entirely natural.

While McGee believes that progressive cuisine has a long way to go before dominating the American culinary scene, Sarkar and Cantu unequivocally predict that within 10 years, half the restaurants in the United States will offer that type of cuisine, and that chefs not adopting it will be left in the dust.

What they all agree on, however, is that home cooks will not be practicing molecular gastronomy — under any label — anytime soon. Professor This says that certain facts that come out of his experiments, such as being able to make a chocolate mousse without using egg whites or that the temperature of the eggs and the oil does not matter when making mayonnaise, could save cooks time and/or money and might thus transfer into home kitchens, but not on a much larger scale. The lack of special equipment, such as the carbonators, emersion circulators, and dehydrators that Sarkar uses at Venue, also impairs home cooks.

More importantly, what unites all these practitioners of a new form of cooking, and of thinking about food, is a love of what they do and a desire to create a different type of experience for diners.

“ Confucius said that men (and women) are not tools,” This concluded. “In education, we should not restrict to technique, but also teach art, and primarily love!”

-Anne E. McBride