On 25 May at 12:30h, the Antoni Caparrós Auditorium at the Parc Científic de Barcelona will host a conference with this title. Given by Hervé This, a physical chemist and deputy scientific manager of the Dept. of Nutrition and Food Safety at the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), the conference will address how science can contribute to the improvement and development of new dishes. Organized by the Sent-Soví Chair at the University of Barcelona and the French Institute, the conference will also include a number of experiments in which the applications of several scientific findings to molecular gastronomy will be demonstrated.

The application of scientific knowledge to recipes and to culinary issues is the basis of molecular gastronomy. This relatively new field of science seeks to improve the methods used to cook food, to discover new physical and chemical phenomena and to develop an array of new dishes. This new discipline includes, among others, studies on how various food properties are modified by actions such as shaking, cutting or chewing and how this change may affect our perception of texture and taste, how to optimise heat transfer in order to ensure that all parts of a food stuff reach the correct temperature simultaneously, and how to control the release of molecules responsible for aroma and taste.