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Browse through my articles on Science and Gastronomy.
“Kitchen Mysteries” by Hervé This
Book Review, Times Higher Education Supplement, November 2007
Hervé This’s new book is an exuberant paean for the role of science in cooking…
Ideal Toast
Daily Mail, September 2005
The first piece of toast that I ever ate was also the most perfect. There were no electric toasters in those days; certainly not in the Australian bush where my father was preparing a barbecue for the family. While the fire was dying down to a glowing layer of coals, he searched for the right tree branch – one that would provide a long enough "handle", together with a narrow fork in which to clamp the bread while he held and rotated it over the coals. The branch had to be green, not dry, to avoid the disaster of having the toasting fork catch fire. He cut one from a tree with his pen knife, and fitted a slice of my mother's home-made bread into the fork. With the springy branch gripping the bread, he squatted in front of the fire and rotated it until it was evenly brown on both sides. My mother cut it down the central uncooked line, coated the pieces with golden syrup, and passed them my brother and me for us to savour. And savour them we did...
 How Does a Scientist Boil an Egg?
Daily Mail, July 2004
A scientist boils an egg in the same way that James Bond did in "From Russia With Love". Bond demanded that his eggs should be boiled for exactly three and one-third minutes, which is just the time that comes out of the scientific equation for egg boiling:
Boiling time = 0.26 x (weight in grammes)2/3 ...
Memories of Oxford Food Symposia
September 2003
“Memories of Oxford Food Symposia” - how does one disentangle them? Even though I have only attended two symposia, it feels like twenty because of the richness of the environment, both in terms of ideas and in terms of people. Others will have memories of ideas shared and friendships made. I also have such memories, but my two primary memories are of panic...
Molecular Gastronomy and the Mafia
Times Higher Education Supplement, May 2001
The Sicilian village of Erice, rumoured former home of the mafia, now plays host to a series of high-level scientific meetings in the ancient monasteries clustered in the village centre. Recently, though, it played host to a meeting of quite a different kind – a meeting of the new gastronomic mafia...
A series of 6 articles on taste and cooking with co-author Peter Barham
Umami Dearest
Guardian Weekend, October 1999
Every two years, a group of leading chefs and food writers and a few lucky scientists such as ourselves get together in the Sicilian mountain village of Erice to consider the serious science of haute cuisine. This year, we spent much of our time discussing the "wow!" factor...
Are You A Supertaster?
Guardian Weekend, October 1999
Around a quarter of the population are supertasters - people who are extra-sensitive to bitter tastes in food. Of the supertasters, two-thirds are women...
With a Pinch of Salt
Guardian Weekend, September 1999
The idea of adding a pinch of salt to enhance the flavour of food is a fairly recent one. Our ancestors didn't go for such subtleties. When they put salt in food, they added it by the bucketful...
A Sour Taste in the Mouth
Guardian Weekend, September 1999
The combination a sweet and a sour taste provides some of the most piquant dishes in the culinary repertoire. Whether it's in an oriental sweet and sour dish or a dessert of sweet fruit with yoghurt, sweet and sour together remain popular favourites...
See the Sweetness
Guardian Weekend, September 1999
There is a world where sugar is orange, honey is yellow and saccharine is a violent shade of pink. That world is the one inhabited by sufferers of synesthia – those few people whose neuronal connections between the tongue and the brain have become miswired, so that they experience taste as something quite different from the way in which most of us experience it...
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