One man and his molecules

09 July 2004 by

For someone who specialised in repossessing office equipment, Heston Blumenthal's plucky move into the world of restaurants nine years ago was in itself remarkable. The rate at which he then secured adoring fans for his faultless cookery and better-than-average grades from the guidebooks was phenomenal.

!](https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/YllTqJuLQcippz8qzcTR)
"We've had such an unbelievable amount of publicity, from January onwards, it just went ballistic. It's been like being patted on the back and kneed in the groin at the same time"
But this year, Blumenthal's life reached new heights. In January, the book-taught chef was awarded three Michelin stars. That same month, Ferran Adriá \[of El Bulli\] described Blumenthal as "the future" while introducing him at the Madrid Fusion Gastro Summit, and two months later he was named overall winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2003 (from a shortlist of no less than 4,000 new books). "We've had such an unbelievable amount of publicity," he says. "From January onwards, it just went ballistic. It's been like being patted on the back and kneed in the groin at the same time. It left me with such mixed emotions." It's hard to comprehend why Blumenthal should be experiencing mixed emotions. In fact, everything's going so swimmingly for him, why isn't he standing on the roof of his restaurant, the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, blowing his trumpet? "It was four years before we got our first star and I thought maybe one day we could get a second star. But when the second star came along, it was such a big surprise. The third star \[awarded in a record time of five years\] was so surreal." Blumenthal was in Madrid at the time - he had been booked to do a demo at the Gastro Summit with Adriá "The day after we arrived I got a call saying we'd been voted the Best Restaurant in England by Observer readers, which was great news. Then Ferran and I did our presentation, which in itself caused something of a stir and, as a result, the next day ended up being crammed with meetings and interviews. Nick Lander \[of The Financial Times\] said he'd get me out of the place for some lunch, just to clear my head, and in the cab on the way back to the exhibition hall I got a phone call from Roisin \[Blumenthal's PA\] saying that the Evening Standard wanted me to give a response to getting my third star." Within minutes, Derek Bulmer, head of Travel Publications at Michelin, was on the phone confirming the news. "I was so shocked," Blumenthal says, "I just went silent, which prompted Derek Bulmer to ask me if I was still there? I just didn't know what to say." So there Blumenthal was, standing in an exhibition hall, hundreds of miles from home, being told that he'd become the third British chef in history to secure Michelin's highest award. It hit the front covers of the Times and the Daily Telegraph the following morning. While Blumenthal describes the experience as weird, moments such as these are becoming typical of the strange world he now lives in. Only 24 hours earlier he had been delivering a session on molecular gastronomy to 500 international food journalists and professional cooks with possibly the most explorative chef on the planet. But he's even humble about that. "My goal there was that I wouldn't have half the audience walking out," he says. "I wanted everyone to be able to smell a flavour molecule, but I didn't know how to do it. We talked about pumping it through the air-conditioning units, but we couldn't do that, so we put a balloon on everyone's seat with a one-way valve so it could only be pumped up. We'd put a couple of drops of benzaldehyde (marzipan) inside the balloons, so that when they were released, which we all did at the same time, the room filled with the smell of almonds. It was amazing." Back in his office, some months later, Blumenthal's world seems equally surreal. I've been to the restaurant numerous times, but it's the first time I've been invited up to his office. It's a tiny, linear room, where three people may work at any one time, and it's absolutely stuffed full with literature. Of course, there's the obligatory food books, but there's probably as many books on science. Copies of New Scientist lie strewn across the desk, intertwined with food magazines and dissertations on food science. "I guess I'm trying not to miss an opportunity," he says, clearly shocked that I think he's something of a culinary oddball. "It's not that you're a freak," I offer, trying to ease the blow, "but you're not normal are you?" He picks up New Scientist. "This was sent to me by Charles Spence of Oxford University - we've been doing some work combining mentho and chilli - he said I should have a read of this. This issue \[he picks up another copy\] came about because Tony Blake \[of flavour firm Firmenich\] does a lot of stuff on memory. I'm working with Nottingham University on developing pastilles with liquid centres. Andy Taylor \[a professor at Nottingham University\] sent some through using pineapple and chilli. So, yes, you have this information coming through all the time, but taking it through from conception to the table is an awful lot of work and getting it to the table is more important than anything else we do." Blumenthal has certainly built up an amazing alliance of like-minded people (see page 27). He rattles off the names of leading scientists, international food journalists, even pioneering DJ Matthew Herbert, who wants Blumenthal to contribute to a piece of music he's making involving the sounds of people eating food. These people are as ready to give and receive information as Blumenthal, which is where all this unexpected attention becomes slightly mind-blowing for him. He struggles to say no to giving up his time. "It's a really exciting time in food at the moment, not just in Europe but around the whole world. We spoke at the Chef Conference about fine-dining becoming more casual and there's an openness among people - that openness and communication will actually drive food forward. There is a part of the food fraternity who don't exactly rubbish it, but they don't want to understand what's going on - maybe they're not interested in it - but it's fantastic that people are happy to share information. That's great news. We're not the most gastronomic country in the world so it's really important we embrace what's happening in other countries to make us part of it." Blumenthal's enthusiasm is infectious. But while he's willing to share his knowledge and spread the word on molecular gastronomy, he laments the fact that there are still individuals, namely British journalists, dragging their feet. Why, he wonders, when there is so much to discuss and explore, do they waste their hour-long interview asking him questions like "Why did you call it the Fat Duck?" and "What made you decide to become a chef?" "It has become really obvious over the past few months that there can be a real laziness among journalists. You get asked the same questions over and over again - I can understand why some chefs start coming out with contentious comments. So I thought I'd write my own background and details of my food philosophy and put it on my website. But they still come in and ask me the same questions. Don't get me wrong, they are all very nice people, but I have to say to them ‘you obviously haven't read the biog - it's all in there, I promise'." On a positive note, Blumenthal's celebrity has introduced him to a growing band of European food journalists who really know their stuff. "Andrea Petrini \[of the Italian TV programme Gambero Rosso, who also writes for French mag Omnivore\] epitomises the core of these travelling food journalists. He wrote the foreword for Marc Veyrat's book - he's far more in tune with what's actually happening than some food writers over here. "In Madrid, Michael Raffael was there, but how many UK food journalists were actually there, compared with most of the major Italian, Spanish, French, Belgium, Americans (such as Ruth Reikel and Jeffrey Steingarten) - they were all there. In terms of English food journalists, not only were they not there, but quite of few of them didn't even know about the event. "Look at the people who contributed impressive things - Juan Mari Arzak and Martin Berasategui from Spain, Marcus Samuelsson from New York, Herv‚ This, Marc Veyrat and Freddie Girardet from France. I think we're so influenced by television in this country, that it creates a perception of what constitutes a good chef." Blumenthal's focus now, having courted a lot of publicity while running the Fat Duck and the Riverside Brasserie, just down the road, with his head chefs Ashley Watts and Garrey Dawson, is to focus on the businesses. "There's a pressure with the three stars - once you've got them you don't want to lose them - and I've got them despite being unconventional. I can't change my beliefs now, and, of course, I don't want to. But because we've got two knives and forks (five knives and forks being the most luxurious), you start to wonder what people's perception is of what they should be getting in a three-star restaurant. "But I keep taking myself back to December and the improvements we'd planned to put in place over the coming year, such as upgraded uniforms and tables. I just had to say to myself: focus on everything on that list and don't change anything you wouldn't have changed before the third star." So how have new customers reacted to the two-knife-and-fork interior, the natural character of the Grade II-listed building? "I ask all the bloomin' time, but people say ‘don't change, don't change'." The appliance of science Aside from Heston Blumenthal's remarkable style of cuisine, what's equally amazing about the chef is the incredible little black book of contacts that he has developed over the years, which enables him to feed into the world of food science and for scientists to feed into the world of the Fat Duck. It would be impossible to name all the people that Blumenthal exchanges information with, but the people below are some of his key contacts. Harold McGee, freelance writer "Harold McGee's book was the single biggest catalyst of the path I'm following now," Blumenthal says. "And his next book \[the 20th anniversary, fully revised second edition of On Food & Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, due to published by Hodder & Stoughton in October\] is going to be one of the best books ever written - it has taken him eight years to write it." McGee has been a freelance writer, writing about the science of food and cooking, since 1979. He's a living library of food science and basic science magazines and books and modestly describes his work as "culling the information that's relevant to restaurants and home cooks and translating that information into plain English for those cooks". In addition to On Food & Cooking, he has also published The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore. Blumenthal first read On Food & Cooking a year after it was published (long before Blumenthal began his career as a chef). But he didn't contact McGee until the Fat Duck was up and running, some 10 years later. Eventually, they met at one of the molecular gastronomy workshops held in Erice, Sicily. Despite the fact that McGee is based in California, Blumenthal and McGee's shared thirst for knowledge regarding food science has developed a strong friendship. "Heston's unique for his combination of classical foundations and standards of excellence, together with the desire to understand and improve even the smallest details of a preparation," McGee says. "He has a curiosity that leads him to experiment with new techniques, tools and ingredients and he has a wonderful sense of humour." E-mail: Dr Peter Barham, Physics Department, University of Bristol Barham teaches physics and conducts original research on polymers, but he combines this with some work of food and some on penguins (yes, penguins). His interest in food science started as a hobby, he says. "I wanted to understand why the things I cooked never turned out like the photos accompanying the recipes. Then I got better at cooking and started to explain things to my colleagues - that evolved into giving lecture demonstrations and it just kept growing. I am not a food scientist, but I believe all good cooks are good practical chemists." Although Barham doesn't describe himself as a food scientist, he is probably best known in the culinary world for his book, Science of Cooking. Blumenthal made the initial approach to Barham. "He called me up when he was looking for a tame scientist to help answer (or rather confirm his own answers) to some questions. His first questions was: ‘Why must you add salt to water when cooking green beans?' Heston had already arrived empirically at the answer (you needn't add salt), but wanted this confirmed. It had been a passion of mine for some time as well - there is no good reason to add salt when cooking green veg - just a long list of very doubtful reasons. "Heston taught me a lot about cooking and flavour combinations, I taught him some basic chemistry and physics that can help in the kitchen. What I like about him is the fact that he's completely open-minded and obsessed with food." "Peter was the first person I met to discuss all this," Blumenthal says. "He doesn't use seven-syllable words when one-syllable words will do. If I could choose one book for chefs to buy as a starting point, it would be Pete's Science of Cooking \[published by Springer\]. I could have spoken to any other scientist first and it would have scared me shitless." E-mail: Tony Blake, vice-president for food science and technology, Firmenich SA, Geneva In addition to his role at flavour firm Firmenich, Tony Blake is a special professor in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham. At Firmenich (a Swiss, family-owned company, founded in Geneva in 1895, which specialises in fragrance and flavours), his department of 20 research into the interaction between flavours and foods and how flavours are released from food during eating. The company has a world-class reputation for innovation (having built its expertise on its scientific knowledge of natural products), its ability to make creative use of these in our everyday life and an understanding of the sensory perceptions and trends among consumers. "Firmenich perfumers have created some of the world's favourite perfumes for over 100 years and the firm provides many of the most well known flavours," Blake says. "Increasingly the company is developing its links with some of today's great chefs following the principle that creativity and sound science can be happily combined." While Blake (right) had studied chemistry and biochemistry, he had been interested in food and cooking since he was a child and "helped" his grandmother in her kitchen (she had once been a professional cook and her husband a baker). When he left university, he joined Unilever and worked in their research laboratory for some years as a product development scientist. "It was here that I first became interested in how flavours are formed in foods during cooking. I have a general interest in all aspects of food science but increasingly I have focused on how we perceive flavour at a sensory and neurological level and how human beings learn to have flavours preferences." Blumenthal contacted Blake four years ago to discuss flavour in food. "He came to Geneva with Peter Barham and we discovered a shared interest in why certain flavours work well together. "Heston has an amazing knowledge of food and for someone who professes a lack of scientific training a very good grasp of science. He is not afraid to combine the two and to ask very pertinent (and often hard to answer) scientific questions which relate to what chefs do in the kitchen. In this way, he has introduced some genuinely innovative techniques and combinations of ingredients which make his food style so different." Blumenthal has become a consultant to Firmenich, giving cooking and theoretical demonstrations within creative workshops. "The Firmenich side has really developed me and given me a lot of stimulation," Blumenthal says. "It has opened my eyes to a whole new world. Tony has the knowledge and ability to look at the menu at the Fat Duck and immediately understand why I couldn't put crab ice-cream on the menu \[because there would immediately be a barrier there\], but I could say frozen crab bisque." E-mail: or visit [www.firmenich.com](http://www.firmenich.com) Professor Andy Taylor, University of Nottingham Andy Taylor conducts research into the causes and mechanisms of flavour perception and is best known for his techniques for measuring the release of flavour from food as it is eaten. "This gives us a dynamic picture of the taste and aroma stimuli that create flavour perception in humans," explains Taylor, who met Blumenthal through Taylor's connections with Tony Blake at Firmenich. What makes Blumenthal an interesting chef to work with, says Taylor, is his ability to take on board a range of ideas and combine them to create a dish. And this is where the future of gastronomy lies, he says. "We can combine the chef's art with some sound science to create novel and/or better-tasting foods." E-mail: Dr Charles Spence, lecturer in experimental psychology, Oxford University At the Department of Experimental Psychology, Charles Spence (below) studies how the brain puts together all the different information that continuously bombards our different senses - taste, smell, vision, touch and hearing. "I am a cognitive psychologist, so I design experiments which try and inform us what cues are important in people's evaluation of food and drink, say," he explains. For example, Spence might carry out an experiment where people evaluate the freshness and crispness of crisps but change the sound that people hear when they actually bite into the crisps. "By doing this, we can show how changing the sound that a food (or drink in the case of carbonated beverages) make when we eat it changes the way we experience the food. "We also do lots of experiments looking at what happens when you change the colour of foods and drinks, such has when Heinz introduced a green variety of tomato ketchup." Because Spence's work is about the human senses ("taste and smell are perhaps the most challenging senses to study in the laboratory"), he is well placed to act as an interface between brain science and food science. "What's more," Spence says, "given how much people eat and drink and how much enjoyment people normally get out of the experience, there are few more interesting and important areas for someone such as myself to study." The future of gastronomy has great potential, Spence says. "To date, many of our advances in food design have come from a trial-and-error approach. The future seems to promise many new advances in the design and preparation of foods that are based on a better understanding of how the mind works. By better understanding how the brain puts together what it sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels, we can design novel food experiences that more effectively stimulate the senses. "What's more, people are becoming increasingly aware that there are big individual differences (both genetically and environmentally-determined) in people's perceptions of foods. Some people are what is known as supertasters - they can taste things that the rest of us will simply never taste. I suspect that the future will see foods that have been designed for particular sections of the population as a function of whether you happen to be a supertaster or not." E-mail: Tomorrow's world? By Dan Bignold Earlier this year, Caterer ran a piece on the future of eating out in this country. When pushed, the chefs bandied a few ideas about what might soon be appearing on our plates, among them sea urchins, marshmallow root, foie de lotte (monkfish liver) and sea lettuce. Rare ingredients indeed, outlandish even - but the future? Well yes, but only in terms of how we understand restaurants today. Take a more imaginative leap forward, as Heston Blumenthal and pharmacologist Paul Clayton did at Mood Food (a highlight of last month's Cheltenham Festival of Science) and you will see how eating restaurant food might soon be transformed beyond any experience any restaurant, even Blumenthal's own, presently offers. Using new discoveries in food technology such as micro-encapsulation, Clayton asked Blumenthal to prepare a menu into which various chemicals (too awful to taste alone) had been slipped unnoticed (not something he would ever countenance at the Fat Duck). It sounded fun. Clayton promised psychotropic additives (all legal), and a panel of "human guinea pigs", including Guardian restaurant critic Matthew Fort, food scientist Helen Conn, journalist Francis Wheen, flavour expert Tony Blake (see page 28) and broadcaster Sue Lawley. They looked apprehensive. Between each course the panel would complete tests to determine how the food was impacting upon their bodies. As Clayton explained, the distinction between food and drugs is very subtle, "both are pharmaceutical and both chemical". He also stressed that nothing synthesised was being added to the foods: "We are just tweaking the diets," he said, "not adding anything that doesn't already exist naturally." The dishes that followed looked more at home in a William Gibson novel, not 2004: nitro meringue plus caffeine and oysters spiked with betaine. There was even toffee-filled carrot laced with theanine. Each additive had its role: caffeine, to drive out tiredness; betaine, to increase adrenalin and serotonin levels to lift mood; and theanine, derived from green tea, to promote tranquility. On the night the tests proved that ability to concentrate and memorise, for example, had all been affected. The guinea pigs, however, shrugged that they had only experienced mild physical changes within themselves. The audience were certainly disappointed if they waiting to see a wild-eyed Lawley jump into Blumenthal's arms. Maybe that was because they were on stage, maybe because it took three hours. Fort made the point that throughout a meal he always experiences changes in feeling anyway. However, it was noted that this could be as much down to the customary glass of wine - which for this experiment was banished. Nonetheless, it is clear that food can now be employed to target specific moods biologically. You might not be scientists, but chefs should be licking their lips with the creative possibilities this presents. Valentine's Day menus that offer a tangible aphrodisiac, pre-club menus that leave party-goers, well, mad-for-it, and Sunday evening menus to wind your punters down. But although this technology is available today, will chefs (as food companies already can) actually be allowed to use this? Over-seasoning would take on a whole new meaning, and governments would surely regulate how much (and to whom) chefs could serve such food. Science serves the chef By Michael Raffael Hervé This is the man spreading the molecular gastronomy gospel in France. His career began as a journalist on the French equivalent of Scientific American. Now working for INRA (Institut National de Recherches Agronomiques), a research body within the Ministry of Agriculture, he persuades the French nation to take the science of cooking seriously. Primary school children listen to him; so does Pierre Gagnaire - and the minister of education. "Molecular gastronomy" wouldn't make a front page headline in the Sun. It sounds overblown to an Anglo-Saxon ear, not an obvious candidate for an NVQ. According to This, the catchphrase arose from his collaboration with Oxford physicist Nicholas Kurti (see page 32). Both men wanted to understand better what happened to food during cooking. They met when This was still a journalist and shared their findings until the Englishman's death in 1998. This has built a career - and developed a new branch of food science - explaining what's happening when we whisk, beat, fry, boil, steam, microwave or grill. Testing the accuracy of culinary lore may have started as a passionately followed hobby. In France he has progressed the knowledge of cooking processes to the point where he could (and probably will) rewrite the textbooks on kitchen practice. His initiatives are already changing the role of la Cuisine in education: "Four years ago the minister asked me to introduce molecular gastronomy in all primary schools. The first experiment we asked children to do was make one cubic metre of meringue with one egg white. They discovered why it's white and why it's firm." For Bacalaureat (A level) physics and chemistry exams, students have to comment on his texts. As part of a multi-discipline approach in secondary education, history teachers look at the origins of, say, mayonnaise, for the geography teachers its regional variations and for the scientists its formulation. And if classical authors such as Balzac have written about it, then literature students will study that too. He also does the rounds of écoles hôtelières (catering colleges), where he believes that the best way of informing the students - as well as reforming the lecturers - is by demonstrating and he often uses an example discovered by Heston Blumenthal: "Let's take the case of green beans. They say you shouldn't put a lid on the pan when boiling because it turns them brown. I do the experiment: same quantity of beans, of water, of salt, same intensity of energy source, one with a lid one without. I ask them to cook the beans and there's no difference. I don't have to say anything more to convince them." Is there a risk of technological overkill swamping professional kitchens? This deflects the nutty professor charge. In the past, cooking evolved slowly, over centuries - partly as a result of observation, partly through trial and error. Chefs have a microscope now to help them. It may explode some myths, such as the fallacy of sealing meat, but it can also prevent the custard curdling. Cooking at its best, This claims, is an art. Technology exists for the artist to exploit, but it's just as important that any craftsman should be a good technician. At the end of the 19th century, chemist Eugene Chevreul discovered a law of Colour Contrasts while working for the Gobelin tapestry-makers: "This law," he explains "tells you if you make a blue dot on a white paper, around the blue you will see some yellow. Artists such as Seurat and Pissaro applied his findings to painting to create neo-impressionism." He relates this example to the work he does with the three-Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire: "I'm only producing the paints. He's the Rembrandt and he gets new colours and ways of handling them from me so he can make a more beautiful picture - that's the hope." Each month, they publish the result of their findings on the chef's website ([www.pierre-gagnaire.com). This has analysed flavour compounds in both cinnamon and vanilla that led Gagnaire to develop a salty glucose glaze spiked with both spices. His advice on molecular changes that occur in vegetable broth when it's reduced at sub-boiling temperatures, encouraged the invention of a "carrot demi-glaze". Increasing whipped egg white volume by adding water gave the chef the idea of devising an olive flavoured meringue he calls "Cristaux de Vent" (wind crystals). In these contexts, the science triggers the chef's imagination. It doesn't do Gagnaire's work for him, so much as extend his range of possibilities. For the craft in general, his published conclusions are broadening the horizons of cooks in other sectors. This believes in a Holy Trinity that determines what gastronomy is. Art and technique are natural partners. "Love", his third element, doesn't define itself so easily: "The problem is not mixing things together, but combining things that speak to the soul." How does a chef come to terms with the fact that the "best meal of your life" might be a sandwich with friends? Part of the answer lies in knowing how taste works. Unravel that, and pleasing those who are eating becomes simpler. Defining what it is, though, can add to the complexity: "Le goût," he describes, "is at the same time visual perception, tactile, olfactive, gustative, thermal, mechanic, subjective, affective and emotional… the stimulation of different taste components increases its dimensions." Professional cooking and many of its practitioners stand accused of being conservative traditionalists. This in France, like Ferrán and Alberto Adriâ in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England, is giving a wake up call. He's not pretending that every chef can or should become a three-star star, but he is encouraging all caterers in whatever sector to be more informed and better educated. Molecular gastronomy… the early years Nicholas Kurti was a professor of physics at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University. An eminent scientist, best known for his work in low-temperature physics, in his latter years he turned much of his attention to organising workshops and writing articles on food and cooking. Kurti had always had an enthusiasm for cooking. During The Second World War, he would store his weekly wartime ration of meat in the laboratory deep-freeze until he had accumulated enough to be able to invite his friends around for dinner. During the restrictions of post-war rationing, he famously went out of his way to procure some Wensleydale cheese for a dinner he was throwing during an international conference on low-temperature physics. Kurti was famous for the experiments he demonstrated in lectures, one of the most famous being to the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1969. He demonstrated the advantages of using hypodermic syringes to put rum into mince pies, how a vacuum pump could be used to make meringues and the benefits of monitoring the inside temperature of a soufflé with a thermocouple. Writing about that evening, Sir George Porter said: "It was all quite memorable, my favourite recollection is of the lecturer with, before him, a large souffl‚ riddled with thermocouples recording the temperature at all depths, asking with much feeling ‘Is it not quite amazing that today we know more about the temperature distribution in the atmosphere of the planet Venus than that in the centre of our souffl‚?'. Many years later, together with Herv‚ This, Kurti organised the very first Erice meeting on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy in Sicily in August 1992. "It was during a visit to the Laurence Livermore Laboratory in California in the early 1990s that he met an old friend, Professor Bob Birge and his wife, Elizabeth Thomas, who lived in Berkeley," explains Tony Blake of Firmenich. "Elizabeth had a cookery school in the Bay area and during one of Nicholas's pleas for scientists to get together more with chefs she asked him why he didn't organise something with this specific objective. He knew of the conference centre at Erice because he had attended physics meetings there and he also knew the Italian physicist Professor Zichichi, who was director of the Ettore Majorana Centre. Through this contact he organised the first Erice meeting. "I met Nicholas soon after this conference when I wrote to him about an article he and Herv‚ This had published in the Scientific American. In the relatively short time I knew Nicholas we became great friends. I still have regular contact with Mrs Kurti (who was 91 this year). "All the people who attend the Erice meetings have one thing in common - they have been captivated by Nicholas's enthusiasm and drive and they actively share his interests in what has become known as scientific gastronomy. The fact that around the world there are a large number of such people who now maintain regular contacts sharing their enthusiasm for science and cooking is perhaps the real achievement of Nicholas; without him, these friendships would not exist." Books and cooks For those wishing to have a greater insight into the world of molecular gastronomy, Heston Blumenthal suggests the following books: - Science of Sugar Confectionery by WP Edwards, published by RSC Books - Howard McGee's On Food & Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, published by Hodder & Stoughton (a new edition will be published in October) - Food Chemistry, published by Springer - Arctander's Perfume & Flavor Materials of Natural Origin - Dr Tom Coultate's Food: The Chemistry and its Components, published by RSC Books
The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking