【精英翻譯】的部落格

The New Science of Cooking 科學與藝術的廚房

精英翻譯社轉自: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0061/331282/web/

Moleculargastronomysounds like a science-fiction horror movie title, but it is changing the way we look at and prepare our food.
分子料理聽起來像是科幻恐怖電影的標題，但它正在改變我們看待及準備食物的方式。

Food science—as its name suggests—is a study devoted to understanding the industrial production of food. This includes research into the safety, preservation, and chemical compositionof food. As a result, the variety and amount of food has greatly increased. Until molecular gastronomy started introducing new ways to apply chemistry and physics to food preparation, how people prepare food changed very little from the ways our ancestors did it for thousands of years.

食品科學 ── 顧名思義 ── 是一項致力於了解食品工業生產的研究。這包括研究食品的安全性、保存以及化學成分。因此，食品的種類和數量大大增加了。在分子料理開始引進新的方法將化學和物理學應用於食物準備之前，人們準備食物的方式，與我們祖先數千年來的做法相比之下幾乎沒有什麼變化。

Before the invention of the microwave oven, food all around the world was prepared the same way over countless generations. The only ways to cook food were by using heat from direct or indirect exposure to fire—such as baking, roasting, frying, or barbecuing—or from heated water—such as boiling or steaming. In stark contrast, the modern molecular gastronomy kitchen looks like a cross between a kitchen and a science lab. That is because food undergoes preparation and treatment that requires great precision, as well as technical tools which are unavailable in traditional kitchens. Molecular gastronomy experiments with processes applied to food that attempt to extract flavors and change the texturesof food. This may sound like a Frankenstein approach to cooking, but it relies on good old 100% natural ingredients. Everything used is from biological sources, whether plant or animal.

在發明微波爐之前，全世界的食物都是以無數代以來人們準備食物的相同方式來準備的。烹飪食物的唯一方式是利用直接或間接接觸火焰的熱能（像是烘焙、烘烤、油炸或燒烤），或是使用熱水（像是煮沸或蒸熟）。形成強烈對比的是，現代分子料理廚房看起來像是廚房和科學實驗室的混合。這是因為食物的準備和處理必須非常精準，也需要用到在傳統廚房中無法取得的高科技工具。分子料理以被應用在試圖提取食物風味和改變食物質地的過程來做實驗。這聽起來可能像是科學怪人的烹飪方法，但它仰賴的是 100% 純天然的優良食材。所用的一切都來自生物資源，無論是植物還是動物。

What is the result of this intense interest in and experimentationwith food? Some very surprising dishes! Transparentravioli, mango puréeserved as a sphere, and caviarmade from olive oil are just a few out-of-the-boxideas created in molecular gastronomy kitchens. Only time will tell whether molecular gastronomy is just a fad or the wave of the future.

這種對食物的強烈興趣以及試驗的結果是什麼？答案就是一些非常令人驚歎的菜餚！透明的方形餃、做成球體的芒果泥以及用橄欖油製成的魚子醬都只是在分子料理廚房中創造出來的一些跳脫框架思考的點子。分子料理只是一時的時尚或者是未來的潮流，只有時間才能證明。