Note-by-Note Cuisine: A Trend that’s Here to Stay?

Hervé This, who, along with Nicholas Kurti in the late 1980s, created the scientific discipline known as molecular gastronomy (which studies the mechanisms of the phenomena produced when ingredients are transformed in cookery), has since taken his innovative cookery research further, developing the new concept of “note-by-note cuisine”, so called by analogy with musical composition. He has now been promoting this new technique for almost 20 years, out of a concern both for sustainable cooking and as a way to expand the range of culinary options. In this article he gives an account of note-by-note cookery, in which dishes are created from pure compounds that may (or may not) be produced by the de-structuring of basic foodstuffs, after the fashion of a musician working with pure frequency waves. This is a development in food technology which Hervé This compares to electro-acoustic (or synthesized) music. Though decried in its early days, that music eventually gained general acceptance and he hopes his cuisine will prosper in the same way.