Hot tea might not sound like the most refreshing of drinks for a 100-degree day. But neuroscientists say that receptors in your mouth may send a cool message when they detect hot foods.
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Cool Down With A Hot Drink? It’s Not As Crazy As You Think : The Salt : NPR
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The Fat Duck | Heston Blumenthal | Cooking Statement
‘Molecular gastronomy’ was coined in the 1991 as a suitably serious-sounding term that would help pave the way for a conference on culinary science.
Since then, however, it has become a convenient, catch-all-phrase to describe science-driven cooking. It explains little and misleads a lot.
In 2006 Heston was involved in producing a statement to explain how his motivations and intentions weren’t confined to the sphere of molecular gastronomy.
ONE Three basic principles guide our cooking: excellence, openness, and integrity.
We are motivated above all by an aspiration to excellence. We wish to work with ingredients of the finest quality, and to realize the full potential of the food we choose to prepare, whether it is a single shot of espresso or a multicourse tasting menu.TWO Our cooking values tradition, builds on it, and along with tradition is part of the ongoing evolution of our craft.
The world’s culinary traditions are collective, cumulative inventions, a heritage created by hundreds of generations of cooks. Tradition is the base which all cooks who aspire to excellence must know and master. Our open approach builds on the best that tradition has to offer.THREE We embrace innovation - new ingredients, techniques, appliances, information, and ideas - whenever it can make a real contribution to our cooking.
We do not pursue novelty for its own sake. We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous-vide, dehydration, and other nontraditional means, but these do not define our cooking. They are a few of the many tools that we are fortunate to have available as we strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes.FOUR We believe that cooking can affect people in profound ways, and that a spirit of collaboration and sharing is essential to true progress in developing this potential.
The act of eating engages all the senses as well as the mind. Preparing and serving food could therefore be the most complex and comprehensive of the performing arts. To explore the full expressive potential of food and cooking, we collaborate with scientists, from food chemists to psychologists, with artisans and artists (from all walks of the performing arts), architects, designers, industrial engineers. We also believe in the importance of collaboration and generosity among cooks: a readiness to share ideas and information, together with full acknowledgment of those who invent new techniques and dishes.http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal/Cooking-Statement/
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On the Science of Cooking - An Edge Conversation with Nathan Myhrvold
Cooking also obeys the laws of physics, in particular chemistry. Yet it is quite possible to cook without understanding it. You can cook better if you do understand what is going on, particularly if you want to deviate from the ways that people have cooked before. If you want to follow a recipe exactly, slavishly, what the hell, you can do it without understanding it. As a rote automaton, you can say, "yes, I mixed this, I cook at this temperature" and so forth. But if you want to do something really different, if you want to go color outside the lines, if you want to go outside of the recipe, it helps if you have some intuition as to how things work.
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