Doctor Delicious

Magic Meat Glue


Perhaps the most fun to be had with experimental cooking comes from the magic potions known as hydrocolloids, a class of ingredients familiar to anyone who´s perused the labels of processed foods-cellulose, xanthan gum, agar, alginate, carrageenan, gelatin-but that, until recently (with the exception of gelatin), were not a fine cook´s ingredients. Generally, hydrocolloids are used to thicken, gel, or stabilize liquids; they can also be used to great effect to change texture, enabling a chef to produce a foam that won´t collapse or, in Arnold´s case, to make a "sponge cake" with methyl cellulose that can be shot from a compressed whipped-cream canister onto a plate without requiring baking.

Despite their negative associations with junk food, most hydrocolloids actually come from natural sources. Agar and carrageenan are derived from seaweed, gelatin from cow and pig bones, and pectin from citrus and apples. Some of these additives, such as agar, a common thickener in Thai cooking, have been around for centuries; others, like transglutaminase (known in the industry as "meat glue") are newer and can be used for some pretty out-there stuff-attaching chicken skin to a piece of fish, say, or gluing a piece of skate wing to a slab of pork belly. In his appearance on Iron Chef in 2005, Dufresne used transglutaminase to bind pureed fish into "noodles," which were toothsome and delicious, not to mention clever. (Full disclosure: I served as a judge on that episode. I voted for Dufresne to win, but my colleagues overruled me and gave the nod to Mario Batali.)

"The problem," Arnold says, "is these [additives] have been used for decades to make products with a longer shelf life, to reduce the fat, to make something that you can freeze, to make something that ships farther, to make something that´s cheaper. And these are all things that, in the end, reduce quality. Chefs have started looking at these ingredients as a quality enhancer, something to be proud of. Most of the top people are using these products, because they make food better. Hardly any of them talk about it, because it sounds gross. There are a couple of people who, like Wylie, they talk about using these things because they love the products and they´re trying to rehabilitate their image. So there´s use of these products for economy, and there´s use for effect, and these chefs are using it for effect."

"Sometimes it´s just about learning," Dufresne says. "It´s about understanding. That´s why bringing traditional chefs together with scientists is infinitely interesting, because even if, at the very least, all they do is help explain things, and help us understand what´s happening while we cook, then we´re becoming better cooks."