Hervé This: The world’s weirdest chef | Prospect Magazine

I arrived at the National Institute for Research in Agronomy in Paris at nine o’clock in the morning. Founded in the 19th century to study the chemistry of fertilisers for agriculture, it occupies a handsome yellow brick edifice in the quiet environs of the fifth arrondissement, not far from the Botanical Gardens of the Jardin des Plantes with its venerable museums of natural history, paleontology, entomology, minerals and evolution. I was there to meet Hervé This, the scientist who has been at the forefront of the new scientific discipline of molecular gastronomy that has changed the way chefs cook—turning mousses into gels and foams, determining the precise temperatures that denature meat proteins, understanding the complexities of the perception of taste itself. Now he is pushing the very idea of what food is to a new frontier. Having deconstructed cooking into chemical and physical principles, he wants to reconstruct flavour itself. He had finished his morning meeting with his PhD

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