Was Food Pairings now Molecular Gastronomy

Howard Schwartz wrote

There is a lot of this going on at the moment Howard. You may have heard of a movement in world cuisine called Molecular Gastronomy. This can be described as "Science in the Kitchen" wherby chefs and scientists are working collabratively to identify on a molecular level what flavours work together and why. This is happening in a lot of places, some of the most well known are The Fat Duck of chef Heston Blumenthal in the UK or Ferran Adria's El Bulli in Spain. A good overview of the subject can be found here

In Melbourne Australia we have George Calombaris' Reserve Restaurant which is almost entirely devoted to MG and Fenix, the restaurant of George's mentor Raymond Capaldi which incorporates elements of MG into a more traditional fine diner serving Mod Oz. Some of the food pairings are quite unusual (carpaccio of beef with raspberry sorbet for example) but work well. A lot of it is also new ways to present old combinations. I have had at Reserve an oyster in frozen Champagne foam. A bottle of Mumm has a couple of leaves of gelatine dissolved in it and it is then gassed & frozen inside a soda syphon. When discharged from the syphon the champagne is a thick glossy white foam which is served in a shot glass with a pacific oyster on top. This is a magnificent (and classic) combination as all who love Oysters and Champagne can testify. I've also had risotto with an olive oil ice cube, where an ice cube tray is place in the freezer long enough to form a shell, a hole is knocked into the top of the ice cube and the water is tipped out leaving only a shell which is then filled with an unfiltered Extra vigin olive oil, a drop of water is placed on the hole and the tray is completely frozen. The cubes are then turned out & served on hot risotto which melts the water (less than a teaspoon in all) very quickly leaving the very cold oil to gradually ooze down over the risotto and be incorporated into it. There is a lot of this in MG using temperature as another component in layering complexity into the dish, it also deals with our expectations before we taste (what we see, smell and what our experience tells us to expect) there is an interesting example of a wine tasting on the website I referenced above, I reproduce it here -

"If you taste a wine you will be influenced by its colour. Indeed a recent experiment fooled all the experienced wine tasters. In this experiment the tasters were asked first to taste 6 white wines and describe the flavour. They described the flavours using words like "refreshing", "strawberry", "citrus", etc, to identify different notes in the aroma - these are words frequently used to describe white wines. Then when asked to identify the wines the tasters were able to correctly identify the grape and the region - some even giving the exact vineyard and vintage.

Next a trick was played - the same 6 wines were served again, but this time with a little inert red food dye added. This time the tasters used completely different language to describe the flavour - "woody", "tannic", "powerful", etc. all words associated with red wines. Then when asked to identify the wines all plumped for red grape varieties and a few ventured opinions on actual wines they believed they had just tasted.

However, when the experiment was repeated again - this time with the tasters blindfolded - they once again got the answers correct. "

I think that food pairings (wine being a food, albeit a very diverse one) all apply the same principles which have been expounded on well in the earlier thread (and the many threads that have dealt with food & wine matching here) essentially looking to balance the flavours and trying to gain a synergy where they become more than the sum of their parts. I think that what's happening here with MG can potentially have an impact on wine and our understanding of the flavours involved. I imagine a day in the future where I may buy a wine by reading the complex chemical composition instead of the tasting notes. :)

Cheers Andrew