Ever dream of a cookbook with an entire section devoted to crispy skin, including a sidebar for food nerds on the science of crackling fish skin and a high-res gastro-porn centrefold featuring seven different preparations of Finger-Lickin’ Chicken?
Now imagine that same attention to detail focused on countless other corners of the culinary universe, from the fastest way to decant red wine (a blender, shockingly) to the best way to cook meat (sous vide, of course).
If you’re Nathan Myhrvold, eager for another challenge after four graduate degrees, postdoctoral work with Stephen Hawking and a king’s ransom in earnings as Microsoft’s chief technology officer, you don’t just dream it, you do it. Of course, Dr. Myhrvold’s culinary bona fides aren’t too shabby, either: He’s a graduate of La Varenne, a prestigious French cooking school, and a former champion at the Memphis in May barbecue tournament.
The realization of his dream, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, has fuelled debate over whether Dr. Myhrvold is a modern-day Escoffier or a culinary supervillain. At six volumes, more than 2,000 pages, almost 50 pounds, and up to $656.50 at online retailers, it may well be the definitive guide to the history, science, ingredients and technique of the culinary style formerly known as molecular gastronomy, as well as the most important text on food and cooking in decades. Dr. Myhrvold talked with The Globe and Mail.
Modernist cuisine has traditionally been known as molecular gastronomy. Why the new term?
There just wasn’t any good term out there, so I decided that I’d come up with one. I wanted a name that would reflect the issue of what the cuisine means intellectually. I argue that it really is the intellectual peer of modernism in art, architecture, literature and other aspects of aesthetic life. This current phase of cooking is that modernist revolution.
Is cooking art?
It can be art, but mostly it’s treated as craft. It’s very common for modern art to have as an explicit goal to make you feel uncomfortable, or to challenge your assumptions, or to be intellectually or emotionally challenging to you. That is a bizarre thing for most food lovers. To the degree that people can say music is art, or that painting is art, or that architecture is art, absolutely cooking ought to be.
So why is there so much resistance? One of the primary arguments against modernist cooking is that it’s soulless.
I completely disagree with this point of view. The simplest example is: It’s possible for an experienced chef to judge the temperature of things by poking meat with his finger or by putting a metal skewer in it and holding it up to your lips to judge the temperature. That’s a silly skill to have. You’ll never be as good as a thermometer. What’s soulful about being a bad thermostat?
Do you buy the criticism that modernist food is inaccessible restaurant food?
Of course there are many things where innovation occurs at the high end. Race cars develop a lot of the things that are in ordinary cars, but it takes a while for the things to trickle down. Very high-end traditional food is equally inaccessible. What we’re trying to do is to take the ideas and techniques that were first developed in high-end restaurants, have since trickled down to a wider set, but still small set, of places, and bust them open for everybody.
Do you think there's a battle going on for culinary hearts and minds over the future direction of cooking?
No, I don’t think that’s the way things happen in life, particularly in cooking. An analogy I use in the book is architecture. Architecture is both an art and a very prosaic craft.
If you went down the street in Toronto you would see some architectural masterpieces of the present (and maybe some monstrosities), you’d find some architectural masterpieces of the past, but most of the buildings in Toronto are there to put a roof over somebody's head. It’s not particularly artistically great. I'm sure there's a block in downtown where you'd find old and new buildings sitting side by side. That’s what restaurant food is going to be. There are going to be traditional restaurants forever. The idea that that goes away is just silly. Of course there’s going to be different styles and varieties, often sitting side by side, just like those buildings. And some are going to be high art and some are going to be refuelling. Modernist cuisine is not going to put Tim Hortons out of business.
