I worked at the lab. “Modernist” was chosen from what I remember because he didn’t like “molecular gastronomy”, which is what everyone was calling texture manip

I worked at the lab. “Modernist” was chosen from what I remember because he didn’t like “molecular gastronomy”, which is what everyone was calling texture manipulations and laboratory techniques applied to food at the time, and to differentiate it from “classical” cooking - the Escoffier through Marco Pierre White era basically. We cooked a lot of dishes from the book for special events, but it was often the same lot of dishes over and over. Writing the recipes was an absolute pain in the ass (I was a cook, I was not used to documenting things in a lab manual), and I absolutely believe lots of hidden variables got lost - again, while there were lab-trained chefs there - Chris I believe had a background in biology or something - us grunts were line cooks beforehand.