The Chefs Go to School: a Cooking&science Course to Study Deeply the Food World

Chapter 3. Cooking technologies With the 3 chapter we enter the second half of the “Cooking and Science” course. During the first lesson, the coordinator of the course, Prof. Pere Castells, together with Prof. Carme González gave a general description about which are the different technologies used in the kitchen. First Pere Castells showed which are the equipment and tools used in professional kitchen and how they work, from the most traditional to the most recent ones (whipping siphon, freeze-dryer, rotary evaporator). Afterwards, Prof. González focused in a more technical theme: heat and its transmission system. The pathway can be direct, as in conduction and radiation, or indirect, as in convective circulation. For each system the students learned the theoretical definition and which equipment represents the best application of this technic [1, 2, 3]. The day continued with the explications of Prof. Robert Soliva on the new cooking technologies. He mainly focused on the non-thermal technologies and their effects on foods: high hydrostatic pressure, electric pulses of high field strength, UV light, cold plasma, magnetic fields, ultrasounds and Ionizing radiation. Since the Paleolithic, humans used technologies to produce, save and modify foods, so it is normal that they keep on developing more and more these technologies. This doesn’t have to scare consumers or arouse suspicions to them. On the other hand this doesn’t mean that we have to forget about our traditions: we have to preserve our products, our culinary culture, and use these new technologies to our benefit.