This himself can make it sound like the most impractical of disciplines. He talks of the “paradox of the velouté,” has published charts on the different rates at which coffee chills depending on when one adds milk, and once spent more than three months researching whether egg whites should be stiff or soft for a soufflé. His talk can reach such a point of theoretical abstraction that an inner heckler can be heard to say, “Sorry, pal, there’s no final frontier in my fridge.”
Yet a moment later he can seem like the only person in the French food world who is facing facts. For French food today is indeed caught in a vise, between the unchanging expectations of the clientele and the reduced ability of chefs to meet them. The 35-hour workweek (and the five-week vacation and towering labor costs that trail after it) has introduced a hard concrete figure in among the sepia tones of the French culinary heritage. Every restaurant shows signs of the struggle it entails. At the little corner bistro, you might notice there is not a single vegetable garnish because the patron simply can’t afford a second employee (he’s already cooking appetizers, main courses, and desserts, and he and his wife will wash the dishes when everyone leaves). At the Michelin three-star, they don’t stint on employees—and a soufflé for one costs 40 euros. That is close to $50 for dessert.
What is it behind these figures that risks getting lost? Is French food to become a choice between cut corners and shored-up grandeur at exorbitant prices? It hardly even strikes one as alarmist to say that a certain idea of France is at stake. No country has its identity so entwined with its food. For the French, as for many of us, the rustic calm of poplar-lined country roads can be evoked by the caramelized edges of a tarte aux fruits, the serene permanence of its traditions captured in the braised lettuce and pearl onions mixed in with a buttery serving of petits pois à la française. If we lose French food, we will have lost France.
It is because the question crystallizes around the figure 35—the hours in that workweek—that This returns to it time and again. It is his touchstone, the number that gives weight to his theories and purpose to his actions. The experiments he is proudest of are those that disprove a traditional technique and would, if implemented, shear precious minutes from the labors of cooking. The paradox of the velouté, for example, is in fact just that. Traditionally, it has been maintained that the foam rising to the surface of a flour-thickened sauce is an impurity. However, This has made clinically sterile veloutés from which the foam still rises. Such a discovery might sound inconsequential, but it certainly is not to the kitchen apprentice who has to spend the break between lunch and dinner doing the skimming.
The crisis in French gastronomy represents the moment that a scientific approach to cooking has been waiting for, and This has grabbed it with both hands. The paradox of this grandee of the Collège de France is that he spends his time thinking of ways to save time for kitchen workers he will never meet. His whole life revolves around diffusing the message that French cooking can be saved through the enlightening principles of molecular gastronomy. A father of two, he doesn’t own a television or read newspapers. On any given day of the week, there are constant appointments to be made, performances taped, lectures delivered, and best sellers promoted. (The first English translation of one of his books, Casseroles and Éprouvettes: Pots, Pans, and Test Tubes, will be published by Columbia University Press this fall.)
His friend Pierre Gagnaire, the Michelin three-star chef with whom This collaborates on recipes (accessed at pierre-gagnaire.com), says of This, “He must impose himself on every level of French gastronomy. He’d go to dinner at the Confrérie de l’Andouillete,” which is akin to going to the opening of an envelope. He also pays This the highest compliment one civilized Frenchman can pay another. “He makes us want to think.”
A recent talk brought This to the Université de Paris-Sud at Orsay, a boxy, aging campus located in the hinterland where the outermost reaches of the Paris suburbs finally bleed back into the fields and forests of the Île-de-France. The setting was a world away from the Collège de France, and yet This, as always, seemed totally at ease, oblivious of his environment, fiercely intent on the exchange.
“Pretend I’m a Martian and I want to make puff pastry,” he started. The nine chemistry undergraduates gathered around him laughed. They expected such a launching point from a man many had only seen before on television. The blazer was off, his strength apparent under the fabric of his shirt, his intensity palpable every time he leaned forward to cajole an answer from a shy undergraduate. Behind him on the tiled counter, his ever-present laptop swirled on screen saver mode; beside it lay the unusual mix of a bag of flour, a bottle of vegetable oil, a russet potato, and Pyrex beakers and test tubes. In this setting, This appeared like a man positioned between tradition and modernity, a man who embodied the twin heritages that are his, that of a Frenchman and that of a scientist, who by his indefatigable energy reassures the French that their cooking will remain eternal even as it wrestles with the challenges of the everyday.
But at that moment he was a Martian who wanted to make puff pastry. First he had to find out whether starch is heavier than water. He cut the potato in half with his penknife, crosshatched the inside surface, and dunked the potato in a beaker of water. A white film started to descend through the water. The students commented on the simplicity of the proof. This smiled. He had the audience. He flashed look one.
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