Molecular gastronomy – the use of scientific processes in cooking – has given us the snail porridge, the coffee flavoured lasagne and even the toenail-infused escalopes. Okay, it didn’t give us the last one – that’s made up. But in today’s Michelin-starred restaurant world, full of food combinations that deliberately make our bellies growl with curiosity, that peculiar dish wouldn’t look amiss.

Call it a post-Heston environment (in reference to the chef who pioneered culinary science with his Fat Duck restaurant). His celebrated restaurants might be a stretch for most people, but his television presence – along with his endorsement of the Waitrose supermarket – have helped to establish him, along with his scientific craft, as a household name.


So household, in fact, that individuals are now practising the art in their own home. Molecular kits aimed at the home cook enable anyone with an oven, kitchen top
and set of knives to indulge in the culinary science. Molecule-R, for instance, is a range of home kits that can be bought for as little as £40 – several pounds short of the average bill at The Fat Duck – and allow any budding chef to make experimental dishes such as chocolate spaghetti and mint caviar. Molecular food is now a little more democratic. Even the master himself, Heston, has declared the movement as ‘dead’, with a statement in a recent issue of The Observer’s Food Monthly saying the idea has become a novelty in modern cuisine. ‘The danger is that technology overtakes the value of the dish,’ he remarked.Diners want a unique custom-made experience that plays on all the senses, away from the homogeneity of chains and mass-dining – an experience that can’t be recreated.