10 ms·

The End of Cuisine

83 points by wallflower 12y ago

russell_h 12y ago
Nathan Myhrvold appears to be a co-founder of Intellectual Ventures.
- jwr 12y ago
  Yes, Nathan Myhrvold is a well known patent troll. He should be called out for what he really does, instead of being called an "inventor".
  - tzs 12y ago
    Why can't he be called both?
    - misuba 12y ago
      I'm reminded, maybe unfairly, of the moment just before Enron went under, when it suddenly realized that it'd probably be a good idea to have some actual assets and bought up a bunch of land to do sundry things with (mostly wind farms IIRC). Maybe Myhrvold had a premonition (prematurely, sad to say) that the legal shit concerning IV's business was about to hit the fan, and decided to diversify. There's zero evidence for this, but it's amusing.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        Myrvhold's engagement with modernist cooking predates IV.
- tzs 12y ago
  So? He also an amateur paleontologist whose work in that field has been published in Nature, has masters degrees in both space physics and mathematical economics, a PhD in theoretical physics, has worked as a postdoc for Stephen Hawking, is an award winning nature photographer, won first place at the Memphis barbecue championship, and is one volcano lair away from true mad scientist territory with his proposals for large scale geoengeering to deal with climate change. People at his level somehow manage to have both a very diverse set of interests and to excel at all of them. It's kind of annoying...I have a very diverse set of interests, and I suck at most of them. How do they do it?
  - eitland 12y ago
    > People at his level somehow manage to have both a very diverse set of interests and to excel at all of them. I guess it helps a lot if you are really really rich and have time to do whatever you want for days on end. I also guess some people would say Nathan Myhrvold is rich partially because he is running a very successful extortion scheme (my mind is not made up.)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      My guess is he's rich because his company got bought for $1.5 million in Microsoft stock in 1986.
  - davidw 12y ago
    Looks like he won the BBQ championship by being on the team of people with some serious chops: http://modernistcuisine.com/2012/05/my-first-memphis-in-may/ http://modernistcuisine.com/2012/05/my-first-memphis-in-may/ Still, a pretty cool story. Here are my recent BBQ efforts.... not going to win any championships, but lots of people in Italy have never had any BBQ and it tastes pretty good: https://plus.google.com/+DavidWelton/posts/g73Vno46dDA https://plus.google.com/+DavidWelton/posts/g73Vno46dDA
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
daviddumenil 12y ago
'Page not found' for that URL. This one works though: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/15/style/tmagazine/endofcuisine.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/15/style/tmagazin...
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks; changed.
morsch 12y ago
What are the things out of modernist cooking that I can actually, you know, use? I'm not going to "mold casts from real kumquats" and then use them to serve "sugar cubes that were rubbed on kumquat skin to extract its flavor". I like to cook, and I like to eat, and I'd have little qualms about using modernist cooking techniques, but they all seem to involve an expense of time and equipment that I'm not willing to invest given the alternatives. I guess sous-vide is making it into some regular kitchens beholden to the laws of time and space.
- VLM 12y ago
  From "modernist cuisine at home" which is kind of the diet version of the full $625 set, I have made the pressure cooked carrot soup and it is in fact the best carrot soup I've ever eaten. So you need a pressure cooker. And probably an immersion blender or at minimum a blender of some kind. I've also done a variety of extractions. Carotene butter (which I think you need for the soup above anyway). This requires little more than a vegetable or herb with fat soluble flavors (like lots of carrot) and some butter and a saucepan. And a juicer. Maybe I'm a weirdo (oh, who am I kidding, I'm a weirdo) but I like carotene butter on ... everything. Its like butter-ketchup, but tastier. The recipes are not necessarily oriented around generating the maximum volume of food or quantity of food per unit of raw material input. So it takes a lot of carrots to make a large batch of carotene butter. So it does. And its worth it. A lot of it is ideas and techniques. So the advice on homemade hamburgers was interesting and informative and I was able to successfully employ it. But I didn't "git clone" the recipe, I just kind of fixed up my technique.
  - mitchty 12y ago
    Yep, the biggest takeaway from modernist cuisine is that knowing how food cooks and the chemical reactions therein means you can cook a better meal. Its not necessarily about distilling the flavor of a thing and making it look like something else. Thats more a upscale restaurant thing. The things I found most intriguing were how little we actually knew about the process of cooking. Like barbeque as an example, it boggles my mind that until modernist cuisine came around we didn't really understand how it worked at a fundamental level. Just a bunch of "well we do this and it works and tastes well", aka we hit a local maxima and didn't seem to want to move off that hill to see if there were higher peaks around by using binoculars.
jaimebuelta 12y ago
I find interesting that high level cuisine is growing more and more detached from "eating". It is more similar to an spectacle, when one should be surprised or even shocked, and it's not designed to be done everyday. It is more and more about creating an experience, and ends up being totally different from some sort of "high quality feeding".
- archagon 12y ago
  This what I really like about "modernist cuisine", and why I think it's silly that some people consider it the future of cooking. It's really fun and delightful to very occasionally enjoy food as prepared by a mad scientist, you know? If I'm shelling out $200 for a meal, I'd rather experience it as this sort of ephemeral performance art rather than yet another perfect, but ultimately unmemorable, traditional dish. But aside from the occasional technique or two (sous vide), nobody's gonna be doing this sort of stuff at home.
  - adriand 12y ago
    I agree, this is what I find intriguing (although I've never experienced it). It seems to be a little bit like thinking, "okay, we have these various very sensitive chemical and touch receptors in our mouths, what else can we do with them?" The answer of course is still "food" but only because we don't want to consume things that are poisonous or inedible.
- twelvechairs 12y ago
  This has always been the case. Small food stalls can produce great quality good cheaply. So expensive reauatrants have to work on the ephemerals or 'experience'. Its just that this kind of restaurant has grown significantly in our generation where eating out costs less because of the efficiencies of the modern world.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- VLM 12y ago
Goopplesoft 12y ago
Was anyone else rubbed the wrong way by that closing paragraph? It almost seems like in bad attempt to sound 'deep' makes little of everything that went into the meal. Interestingly Nathan has a recipe for the 'ultimate burger' http://modernistcuisine.com/2011/12/the-ultimate-burger/ http://modernistcuisine.com/2011/12/the-ultimate-burger/
- freyr 12y ago
  Not me. Though the author is gracious to Mhyrvold and recognizes the rare opportunity to join in this meal, he does not seem especially complimentary to the food. Actually, he seems unimpressed. Despite all the technical wizardry, the meal might have simply fallen short of something prepared simply. It's a valid opinion.
  - Goopplesoft 12y ago
    Then perhaps he was the wrong person to do the article considering thats quite a contrast to Adria's (who has quite established ethos in tasting/food) seemingly positive opinion of meal.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
The more I read about Myrvhold, the more I don't like him. Seems like a billionaire who needs to find a way to define himself.
- pingswept 12y ago
  There is a lot to dislike about him. A man who becomes the preeminent patent troll after already having a enough money to do anything he wants-- worst kind of person, if you ask me.
sheltgor 12y ago
Interesting tidbit at the end on Dicks, and I completely agree. As simple as it is (only four variations on the burger, cheese, no cheese, all the fixings, double with everything, one size of fries, shakes, and that's their entire menu), one can really appreciate it.
ebbv 12y ago
> “Cooking at this level is like giving a concert,” he said. “No one in their right mind gives 300 concerts a year.” Many musicians, even famous and successful ones, do just that. I love food, including expensive, fancy food. I grow vegetables, and I have a CSA where I get local vegetables weekly. Food like Myhrvold's, to me, is rich, ignorant assholes behaving like rich, ignorant assholes. I say ignorant because while they may be well versed in certain areas, their knowledge is very narrow and skewed. They fancy themselves adventurous intellectuals, when in reality they are precisely the opposite. They are some of the most closed minded people you will find. Also, for anyone who doesn't already know, Intellectual Ventures (Myhrvold's IP troll firm) is one of the worst. A little Googling on their actions tells you everything you need to know about what kind of person he is.
- Fr0styMatt 12y ago
  Can you give some more examples of the kinds of closed-mindedness you're trying to get at? I'm trying to understand your line of thought. Are you saying that Myhrvold is being an asshole because he's elevating what he is doing to a much higher level than it justifies? Not agreeing or disagreeing - genuinely curious.
indubitably 12y ago
50 courses? Disgusting.
enoch_r 12y ago
This is completely unrelated to the point of the article, but this struck me: > To fight malaria, the lab has invented a “photonic fence” device that identifies, tracks and zaps female mosquitoes (only females bite humans). Can anyone explain why it's important enough to only kill the females that we might want to add (presumably expensive) sex-identification technology to mosquito zappers that are aimed at eliminating malaria in poor countries?
- Noxchi 12y ago
  There isn't sex identification technology. Mosquitoes eat nectar from plants. They only use blood for mating purposes (and the female is the one that has to get it). So if there are mosquitos around humans, they are almost all female anyway (and the ones that aren't don't bite).
- mbrameld 12y ago
  It's not very expensive. They measure the frequency of the wing beats. You can even build your own: http://makezine.com/2010/08/30/make-23-how-to-shoot-mosquitoes-wit/ http://makezine.com/2010/08/30/make-23-how-to-shoot-mosquito...
- Ryel 12y ago
  I don't think this is what you're talking about but one of the ways of killing mosquitos is to lace a gallon of water with a chemical that attracts adults and kills them along with any eggs. In practice, this would basically target only females. After a quick search I found this link leading to a page of Intellectual Venture's http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-inventions/photonic-fence/ http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-i... It's pretty cool but unfortunately looks tied to IV. My first guess might be to avoid any criticism that by killing ALL mosquitos, they're harming the ecosystem. I guess that's wishful thinking for a company that I kind of despise even being on their website.
- ebbv 12y ago
  I'd guess the idea is if you kill all the mosquitos then you are decimating the food supply for the animals that eat mosquitos. But if you just kill the females at least it cuts whatever damage you're doing to the food supply by half.
juanre 12y ago
Only tangentially related: if you like cooking and understanding what you do, Jeff Potter's Cooking for Geeks is a wonderful book. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596805890.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596805890.do
michaelfeathers 12y ago
Funny that this is called Modernist Cuisine. It's very ornamental and inventive. Most Modernist movements had their heyday in the early 20th century. Maybe it is because of the technological focus.

The End of Cuisine

83 points by wallflower 12y ago

russell_h 12y ago

Nathan Myhrvold appears to be a co-founder of Intellectual Ventures.

jwr 12y ago
Yes, Nathan Myhrvold is a well known patent troll. He should be called out for what he really does, instead of being called an "inventor".
- tzs 12y ago
  Why can't he be called both?
  - misuba 12y ago
    I'm reminded, maybe unfairly, of the moment just before Enron went under, when it suddenly realized that it'd probably be a good idea to have some actual assets and bought up a bunch of land to do sundry things with (mostly wind farms IIRC). Maybe Myhrvold had a premonition (prematurely, sad to say) that the legal shit concerning IV's business was about to hit the fan, and decided to diversify. There's zero evidence for this, but it's amusing.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Myrvhold's engagement with modernist cooking predates IV.
tzs 12y ago
So? He also an amateur paleontologist whose work in that field has been published in Nature, has masters degrees in both space physics and mathematical economics, a PhD in theoretical physics, has worked as a postdoc for Stephen Hawking, is an award winning nature photographer, won first place at the Memphis barbecue championship, and is one volcano lair away from true mad scientist territory with his proposals for large scale geoengeering to deal with climate change. People at his level somehow manage to have both a very diverse set of interests and to excel at all of them. It's kind of annoying...I have a very diverse set of interests, and I suck at most of them. How do they do it?
- eitland 12y ago
  > People at his level somehow manage to have both a very diverse set of interests and to excel at all of them. I guess it helps a lot if you are really really rich and have time to do whatever you want for days on end. I also guess some people would say Nathan Myhrvold is rich partially because he is running a very successful extortion scheme (my mind is not made up.)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    My guess is he's rich because his company got bought for $1.5 million in Microsoft stock in 1986.
- davidw 12y ago
  Looks like he won the BBQ championship by being on the team of people with some serious chops: http://modernistcuisine.com/2012/05/my-first-memphis-in-may/ http://modernistcuisine.com/2012/05/my-first-memphis-in-may/ Still, a pretty cool story. Here are my recent BBQ efforts.... not going to win any championships, but lots of people in Italy have never had any BBQ and it tastes pretty good: https://plus.google.com/+DavidWelton/posts/g73Vno46dDA https://plus.google.com/+DavidWelton/posts/g73Vno46dDA
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

daviddumenil 12y ago

'Page not found' for that URL. This one works though: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/15/style/tmagazine/endofcuisine.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/15/style/tmagazin...

dang 12y ago
Thanks; changed.

morsch 12y ago

What are the things out of modernist cooking that I can actually, you know, use? I'm not going to "mold casts from real kumquats" and then use them to serve "sugar cubes that were rubbed on kumquat skin to extract its flavor". I like to cook, and I like to eat, and I'd have little qualms about using modernist cooking techniques, but they all seem to involve an expense of time and equipment that I'm not willing to invest given the alternatives. I guess sous-vide is making it into some regular kitchens beholden to the laws of time and space.

VLM 12y ago
From "modernist cuisine at home" which is kind of the diet version of the full $625 set, I have made the pressure cooked carrot soup and it is in fact the best carrot soup I've ever eaten. So you need a pressure cooker. And probably an immersion blender or at minimum a blender of some kind. I've also done a variety of extractions. Carotene butter (which I think you need for the soup above anyway). This requires little more than a vegetable or herb with fat soluble flavors (like lots of carrot) and some butter and a saucepan. And a juicer. Maybe I'm a weirdo (oh, who am I kidding, I'm a weirdo) but I like carotene butter on ... everything. Its like butter-ketchup, but tastier. The recipes are not necessarily oriented around generating the maximum volume of food or quantity of food per unit of raw material input. So it takes a lot of carrots to make a large batch of carotene butter. So it does. And its worth it. A lot of it is ideas and techniques. So the advice on homemade hamburgers was interesting and informative and I was able to successfully employ it. But I didn't "git clone" the recipe, I just kind of fixed up my technique.
- mitchty 12y ago
  Yep, the biggest takeaway from modernist cuisine is that knowing how food cooks and the chemical reactions therein means you can cook a better meal. Its not necessarily about distilling the flavor of a thing and making it look like something else. Thats more a upscale restaurant thing. The things I found most intriguing were how little we actually knew about the process of cooking. Like barbeque as an example, it boggles my mind that until modernist cuisine came around we didn't really understand how it worked at a fundamental level. Just a bunch of "well we do this and it works and tastes well", aka we hit a local maxima and didn't seem to want to move off that hill to see if there were higher peaks around by using binoculars.

jaimebuelta 12y ago

I find interesting that high level cuisine is growing more and more detached from "eating". It is more similar to an spectacle, when one should be surprised or even shocked, and it's not designed to be done everyday. It is more and more about creating an experience, and ends up being totally different from some sort of "high quality feeding".

archagon 12y ago
This what I really like about "modernist cuisine", and why I think it's silly that some people consider it the future of cooking. It's really fun and delightful to very occasionally enjoy food as prepared by a mad scientist, you know? If I'm shelling out $200 for a meal, I'd rather experience it as this sort of ephemeral performance art rather than yet another perfect, but ultimately unmemorable, traditional dish. But aside from the occasional technique or two (sous vide), nobody's gonna be doing this sort of stuff at home.
- adriand 12y ago
  I agree, this is what I find intriguing (although I've never experienced it). It seems to be a little bit like thinking, "okay, we have these various very sensitive chemical and touch receptors in our mouths, what else can we do with them?" The answer of course is still "food" but only because we don't want to consume things that are poisonous or inedible.
twelvechairs 12y ago
This has always been the case. Small food stalls can produce great quality good cheaply. So expensive reauatrants have to work on the ephemerals or 'experience'. Its just that this kind of restaurant has grown significantly in our generation where eating out costs less because of the efficiencies of the modern world.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
VLM 12y ago

Goopplesoft 12y ago

Was anyone else rubbed the wrong way by that closing paragraph? It almost seems like in bad attempt to sound 'deep' makes little of everything that went into the meal. Interestingly Nathan has a recipe for the 'ultimate burger' http://modernistcuisine.com/2011/12/the-ultimate-burger/ http://modernistcuisine.com/2011/12/the-ultimate-burger/

freyr 12y ago
Not me. Though the author is gracious to Mhyrvold and recognizes the rare opportunity to join in this meal, he does not seem especially complimentary to the food. Actually, he seems unimpressed. Despite all the technical wizardry, the meal might have simply fallen short of something prepared simply. It's a valid opinion.
- Goopplesoft 12y ago
  Then perhaps he was the wrong person to do the article considering thats quite a contrast to Adria's (who has quite established ethos in tasting/food) seemingly positive opinion of meal.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

simonebrunozzi 12y ago

The more I read about Myrvhold, the more I don't like him. Seems like a billionaire who needs to find a way to define himself.

pingswept 12y ago
There is a lot to dislike about him. A man who becomes the preeminent patent troll after already having a enough money to do anything he wants-- worst kind of person, if you ask me.

sheltgor 12y ago

Interesting tidbit at the end on Dicks, and I completely agree. As simple as it is (only four variations on the burger, cheese, no cheese, all the fixings, double with everything, one size of fries, shakes, and that's their entire menu), one can really appreciate it.

ebbv 12y ago

> “Cooking at this level is like giving a concert,” he said. “No one in their right mind gives 300 concerts a year.” Many musicians, even famous and successful ones, do just that. I love food, including expensive, fancy food. I grow vegetables, and I have a CSA where I get local vegetables weekly. Food like Myhrvold's, to me, is rich, ignorant assholes behaving like rich, ignorant assholes. I say ignorant because while they may be well versed in certain areas, their knowledge is very narrow and skewed. They fancy themselves adventurous intellectuals, when in reality they are precisely the opposite. They are some of the most closed minded people you will find. Also, for anyone who doesn't already know, Intellectual Ventures (Myhrvold's IP troll firm) is one of the worst. A little Googling on their actions tells you everything you need to know about what kind of person he is.

Fr0styMatt 12y ago
Can you give some more examples of the kinds of closed-mindedness you're trying to get at? I'm trying to understand your line of thought. Are you saying that Myhrvold is being an asshole because he's elevating what he is doing to a much higher level than it justifies? Not agreeing or disagreeing - genuinely curious.

indubitably 12y ago

50 courses? Disgusting.

enoch_r 12y ago

This is completely unrelated to the point of the article, but this struck me: > To fight malaria, the lab has invented a “photonic fence” device that identifies, tracks and zaps female mosquitoes (only females bite humans). Can anyone explain why it's important enough to only kill the females that we might want to add (presumably expensive) sex-identification technology to mosquito zappers that are aimed at eliminating malaria in poor countries?

Noxchi 12y ago
There isn't sex identification technology. Mosquitoes eat nectar from plants. They only use blood for mating purposes (and the female is the one that has to get it). So if there are mosquitos around humans, they are almost all female anyway (and the ones that aren't don't bite).
mbrameld 12y ago
It's not very expensive. They measure the frequency of the wing beats. You can even build your own: http://makezine.com/2010/08/30/make-23-how-to-shoot-mosquitoes-wit/ http://makezine.com/2010/08/30/make-23-how-to-shoot-mosquito...
Ryel 12y ago
I don't think this is what you're talking about but one of the ways of killing mosquitos is to lace a gallon of water with a chemical that attracts adults and kills them along with any eggs. In practice, this would basically target only females. After a quick search I found this link leading to a page of Intellectual Venture's http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-inventions/photonic-fence/ http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-i... It's pretty cool but unfortunately looks tied to IV. My first guess might be to avoid any criticism that by killing ALL mosquitos, they're harming the ecosystem. I guess that's wishful thinking for a company that I kind of despise even being on their website.
ebbv 12y ago
I'd guess the idea is if you kill all the mosquitos then you are decimating the food supply for the animals that eat mosquitos. But if you just kill the females at least it cuts whatever damage you're doing to the food supply by half.

juanre 12y ago

Only tangentially related: if you like cooking and understanding what you do, Jeff Potter's Cooking for Geeks is a wonderful book. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596805890.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596805890.do

michaelfeathers 12y ago

Funny that this is called Modernist Cuisine. It's very ornamental and inventive. Most Modernist movements had their heyday in the early 20th century. Maybe it is because of the technological focus.