Alicia Kennedy

A 32-minute boiled egg? Don’t let science ruin the joy of home cooking

Iremember making pearls of balsamic vinegar, my first and only foray into what is known as “molecular gastronomy”, in 2013. It was already a bit passe at that time, but the science experiment aspect – using a pipette to drop balls of agar-stiffened vinegar into oil – of creating a simple acidic garnish for a chocolate and strawberry cupcake was undoubtedly fun. I’d go on to use agar-agar, a vegan gelatine, in dishes like panna cotta, but I never made the pearls again. They were a novelty, and now I have a fond memory of cosplaying as Ferran Adrià, a Spanish chef who popularised these sorts of processes through the restaurant El Bulli. The pearls came to mind while reading about an experiment conducted by Ernesto Di Maio at the…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 21 February 2025

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