Thank you very much for the invitation.
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is a dish where it all started for me
about nine years ago. What it is and what this has to do with food is
interaction will become clear during the first part of my presentation. In the
following parts we will explore the senses, the interaction between the senses
and we will make it also as interactive as possible. You all have the box. Please
don't eat as a alok remind you because we will integrate what is in the box
with the presentation and you will see how the senses react on that. Maybe now
you're convinced that food is just food. Well during the presentation it will
become clear that food is not just food. Food is what you make of it. More
than 50% of how you experience food is not in the food but around the food. So
we will show this clearly during the presentation and we will start directly
with a first experiment. In your box you all have a tube. Open the box or take
the tube out of the box and you open the tube but you don't smell and you don't
taste. So you do like this but you don't you don't smell and you don't taste. So
like this everybody there's sugar inside. If you cannot eat sugar don't eat it
but if you can please. So everybody has opened the tube yeah okay. So now you
pinch your nose. You close your nose like this yeah okay. When your nose is closed
you pour in the sugar into your mouth. Everybody yeah pour in the sugar. So it's
sugar taste. You will have some sweetness because it's sugar some
granular texture because of the granular sugar. And now you open your nose and you
have cinnamon. So it's a very easy trick but it shows something fundamental. Oh
sorry I'm the wrong one. So it shows something fundamental that if you look
to the senses that really matter with the taste of the nose and the tongue that
actually 80% of that experience is determined by your nose. Your nose is
really a crucial element in the eating experience and we made one this masks
this is in New York because you want to let people remember how important the
nose is so we make the extra big long nose and even flavor is that important
that flavor that the aroma will also determine what combinations we can make
and then we go into food pairing. So smell crucial part and then we go into food
pairing because aroma also determines what can you combine into your plate.
Now how did we start with this whole food pairing ID about ten years ago I
started to work with chefs at that time we had Fernandia from Elbuyi and he had
time to close his restaurant for a half a year to experiment and 99% of the
chefs were not able to do that so I started to work with chefs on finding
new methods to develop more efficient new combinations and so while doing this
we're looking of course when you start with something you look as has something
done in the past and there are two people one was a flavorist from Fiumini
and he had made a combination with jasmine based on the fact that for a
flavorist when when he smells jasmine he knows okay jasmine has some floral
notes but this one molecule typical for jasmine that depending on the
concentration goes from floral to meaty so he thought it's quite odd to have a
meaty flavor into the jasmine what would happen if we would combine the
jasmine and liver so he has done that at a seminar with chefs they made a
combination of the jasmine and the liver and wow it was a great combination
now one of the chefs also present at that event was Heston Blumenthal I assume
most of you are familiar with Heston Blumenthal in search of perfection
faddock formula number one restaurant dinner the new restaurant in London so
Heston was also present at that event and when a few years later he was working
with chocolate he did something remarkable well if you who likes to bake
chocolate cake somebody who likes to bake yeah well sometimes you find in the
recipe of a chocolate cake a pinch of salt that's already a first example of
interaction we have five basic taste so sweet sour bitter umami and salty umami
for the ones who are not familiar with umami that's the parmesan the the
bouillon the tomato so we have five basic taste but they interact with each
other because imagine I want to have a dish salty but I want to use as much
salt just by adding umami increasing the umami I can have a dish which is as
salty but with less salt if I have a dish which is too sweet I will add
acidity when I have a dish which is too bitter I will add anyone salt that's a
correct answer you maybe we think that sugar would be the right answer but
salt is more efficient if you if you don't like tonic because it's maybe too
bitter try to add some salt and if you talk to baristas or to bartenders they
they have salt because they know that it's an easy way to balance to balance
the flavor so you have salt in the chocolate cake because we want to
reduce the bitterness why do we don't want to reduce the bitterness because by
genetics we don't like it like sweet like salty black umami but not bitterness
but instead of adding salt he was adding making combinations between
chocolate and salty ingredients like ham and caviar and caviar and chocolate
wow fantastic combination so he wanted to know why the chocolate and the caviar
matched so he contacted the guy from the flavor house they looked at the flavor
profile and they saw overlap actually quite accidentally because the overlap
they saw was not the correct one as we have shown later but they found a link
so in the 90s beginning of the 90s and 2000 they were working on who hasn't
said like kind of an hypothesis that you can combine ingredients when they have
flavor aroma components in common so throughout the nine years of research we
have done we have found that's not really correct you really have to look in
which are important molecules and how are the interaction between all the
molecules so again interaction is a crucial part to determine what can be
combined we will handle out some some strips because I have here a molecule
which is called benzalide and my question to you is please have a smell yeah
okay please have a smell like that perfume so not not too close like this
and please try to guess what you're smelling should be not that difficult to
guess guess what what you're smelling maybe somebody with the mic can ask to
some people what what they're smelling yeah almonds so I will continue but
please have a smell and actually the benzalide that's typical for almonds but
also for cherries for apples for pears because all those plants are part of a
family and they all make the benzalide if you're having a barbecue and use
applewood or cherry wood it also contains the benzalide if you're in
Japan and you're eating cherry blossom pickled cherry blossom it will also
contain the benzalide so all these ingredients that they combine the
benzalide also the chocolate the chocolate has it because by roasting you
create that molecule so when you bake a steak or you roast chocolate you're
making that molecule based on a breakdown product of amino acids so if you
know all these ingredients the benzalide is important so that means that you can
start to combine those one is a dish called benzalide at the Fedoc so it is
roasted foie gras you add the benzalide by roasting have almonds and cherries so
you can combine based on that molecule which is a in common another one is for
example with an almond tin an almond cookie well you have the fig contains
benzalide the the ham dried ham also and the mozala so you can combine those
based on on that molecule you have in your box also not the apple but the other
chocolate this one so this chocolate also contains from nature the molecule
you just smelled it's a chocolate contains a benzalide with griotin the
cherry contains a tea of red fruit and this chocolate is served at the best
restaurant in Belgium which is a Ho Van Kleeve a three Michelin star
restaurant and is made by a chocolatier which I will show in a moment who is
using food pairing all the time to create his new type of chocolate so please
have a bite and imagine you're at the three star restaurant in the
in Curizotem in Belgium you like it yeah okay great so what we do we're
scientists the majority of the company are bio engineers are physicists and
what we do is we analyze with partners worldwide the flavors from products so
yeah for example the fish will analyze the aromas through different types of
equipment that is put into our database and top on top of our database we have
algorithms and they visualize the information in what we call food
pairing trees and these are used by chefs bartenders and food industry
worldwide we have about 1 million users worldwide the majority is chefs more
than a half 20% is bartender so certainly if you're in the top 50 bars the
challenge is very high that you taste a cocktail based on our our algorithms so
we have a website it looks like this for a moment which will change very soon
end of this month we have a part for free with ingredients and with with
recipes and there's also a subscription part for for food professionals for the
for the chefs and what you can find on the website are these food pairing trees
so that's the visualization we use to explain to chefs to foodies what
combinations you can make and so we need for the first time analyzed the
oyster and start to compare with other ingredients we found a match with that's
not right that's black okay that's not a laser okay so we found a connection
between oyster and the kiwi so coming back to to this from the beginning this
is actually a combination of oyster and kiwi it's called kiwitra it's a
dish from a famous chef in Belgium a two Michelin star chef and it's become his
signature dish it was based on the analysis we have done on the oyster and
found connection to to to the kiwi so actually how do you read a food
prank tea like this so we have the product you want to combine with in the
middle oyster and all around ingredients you can combine with the oyster and
they're clustered into categories like on the top you have dairy products then
you go to meat herbs and spices condiments vegetables and so on so
imagine I want to make a combination between oyster and fruit I go to the
fruit category and I see kiwi lemon bergamot are possible combinations to
do oyster lemon it's a classic one but for example bergamot which is also a
citrus fruit actually works better than than lemon because the distance the
shorter the product is to the middle the better the match so you see for
example that particular type of olive oil from Spain matches very well to
oyster you have the kelp the bergamot so the closer to the center the better
the match with all the ingredients that you see around the food prank dream do
match with the oyster and as a website as a food prank.com is it's a
truly an inspirational tool for chefs to create new new combinations or for
high-end chefs to find a confirmation of what they feel by a by intuition so then
you had this dish coming out of the this first food prank dream so we work with a
lot of brands we're very strong in everything with cocktails with drinks
but also in breads in retail we also work for governments like Peruvian
Colombian we have analyzed all the coffees from from Colombia as for
Belgium we do a lot of work in beer and chocolate in December I was in in the
Amazon in Brazil to find new ingredients we have analyzed ants because
we're also doing research on insects coming more and more into the picture
has done in the past but now we have the idea that it breaks finally true so we
do a lot of research on quite a lot of of products actually we have two products
and it can be interesting for you because one we have the foodpain.com
platform where you can see the combinations that's how the new website
will look like but on the other hand we have a private API which is used by
companies for example in the Netherlands we have the Kuiper and the API is much
more advanced than what you can find on the on the food pairing website because
we're not only able to say what combinations work but we can also see
in what quantity it works and we're not into big data so we don't base
ourselves on what is there on existing recipes what we really do in the company
is we really analyze and try to understand why certain combinations work
and because we understand we're really able to generate from scratch recipes so
for example as a cocktail creator you can select whatever drink you want and the
the computer the algorithm will calculate what is the ideal cocktail drink in
that case there are some people we work with all over the world for example in
the left corner that's a Belgian chef he's just become the best European chef
of the year you have Heston for example in the left upper corner you have Tony
Collegiaro from London he's number four or five bartender in the world the the
guy who made the chocolate Dominique is the guy with the hand on his a chocolate
hand on his face so which is really great for us as a company because one way
we have the creativity we work with all the chefs worldwide not all but a lot
of chefs worldwide and also working with the with food with food companies aroma
you can also use in another way one of the chefs also using food pairing is
Grant Akats from Alinea in Chicago he's using food pairing in the dish but you
can also use it outside and the way he does it that's really an older one but
you're sitting at the table and before you they put a pillow and in a pillow
there is an aroma of nutmeg and then they come with the plate and they put the
plate on top of the pillow in the plate is some white bean with some tomato
mango chorizo and foam of of beer but the plate is pushing on the pillow and
the aroma is released bit by bit so while you're eating you're mixing the
nutmeg aroma with the white bean so this in combination with with this match
sardine with pineapple brings me to the following person which is a Filippo
Marinetti he's a futurist and he has published like Cucina Futurista in the
1930s already he was quite ahead of his time at least for the the food part not
for for some other parts but for the food part he was already mentioning that
people should add flavors, perfumes during lunch and I will show you one
example from Rocca which is the number one in the world the Selerican Rocca where
they also use the aroma he was also working on unusual combinations so the
the sardine and the pineapple although for me it's not an odd combination I
think you can imagine that a grilled sardine with some pineapple salsa should
taste good no yeah okay but in that time it was quite unusual but he also was
thinking about something else and for that I need a volunteer Steve he doesn't
know what he's going to do so I will yeah applause
you may drink alcohol liquor so first of all I will blind you by default you
yeah and I have two different drinks
okay so first of all I will give you this so in your hands and then you have to
start rubbing yeah okay okay I will give you the first drink so yeah yeah yeah if
possible with the nose okay and keep it in your mouth and rub again on the the
plate okay thank you so keep in mind what you have tasted now I give you mr.
rabbit yeah okay I will give you the second drink okay again have a sip keep it
in your mouth and I will return mr. rabbit to you and have a hug okay you can
release the blindfold from your nose so can you describe what you what how is
the first drink different than the than the second drink I think the second one
was a little I don't know like sweeter maybe yeah and the first one had a more
I don't know woody taste to it okay and I I'm feeling that you're about to tell me
that I was drinking the same thing yeah well hey yeah but you give the right
answer because what you touch is also influencing the texture you feel into
your mouth like the more rough will be more like
abstringent so you have the wood while something soft let me like sweeter
softer creamier so great thank you very much you want the rabbit back as well
yeah it's my kids I will give you the nose thank you so that guy the Filipino
Marinetti what had had the idea that when people are going to find dining this
should wear a pyjama and on the pyjama you have sandpaper cork felt because by
touching that you will have each time a different experience although it's the
same food and yet a chef in Belgium from Saltershof that gave ice cream to
people when they have to rub the sandpaper and something soft well while
rubbing the sandpaper the the ice became more grainy while something soft is more
more creamy and all texture on table being the chair the tablecloth will
actually influence how you will experience the food so texture in in
tablecloths you name it are quite important to determine how you actually
will perceive this so touch what you touch will also influence how you taste
what the texture is another way of touch is its temperature and this is a famous
example from the fat duck it's called it's like iced tea but what is
fascinating about it it's only iced tea but the left side is ice cold and the
right side is very hot so while you're drinking it you don't mix it you get
cold and and hot it's only ice cream but it's a really fantastic experience
because you're playing with the with the temperature and you don't expect it so
now let's go further on the interaction between the side and taste and we've done
research for a paint company they wanted to make a new range of colors but they
wanted to add something new to it they want to us to to research what is a
relation between the taste and the color so I would like to have five volunteers
on stage come on other people come don't be shy you should be from Europe or US
not from Australia or Asia I will explain afterwards why that is so we made
color cuts we're how much I have five so we can stay okay one two three four you
should all have five cards you do and you can also play with us so we have the
five cards so as explained before we have five basic taste sweet sour bitter
umami and salty now I'm going to ask you which cards reflect which taste so have
a look at your five cards and show me which card is a sweet one
yeah don't think too much go for it yeah you're all right so this is a sweet
card now which card is the sour yeah yeah yeah okay all five correct so this
is a sour card so we're going a little bit difficult which one is salty which
card has a salty yeah yeah yeah yeah okay great so all salty so these are our
taste we're quite familiar with now we're going to in bitterness and and umami
which is not that acquainted for us so well I will start with which card of you
think is bitter
this one so the majority has it right this is better and so the last card is
umami okay great thank you very much I will explain why why you can make this
and from you're from Europe US okay okay great okay so sorry South America okay
yeah thank you very much so why is it that we can make the association between
taste and color because we build that during our lifetime the first time you
you taste and a lemon or a lime or unripe fruit you will remember that it
is sour so you will associate the color of the fruit or the products with the
taste the same for for example for sweet oh sorry I have again the wrong
so this is a sweet card in the top you have a sweet dessert so why do we
associate this with sweet because of sweets of orange of strawberry of banana
so we have eaten this we made association the reason why I said not
people from Australia or Asia because they have a different reference team they
eat different fruits and they make different associations between the
color and the taste but we know we've done this experiment a lot of time and
in Europe and the US it always always works so why is the salt because salt
is white but only white is not salt it is a combination with blue color of the
sea yellow the color of the sand green of algae so the combination of that color
give us a salty in impression umami that's the that's the parmesan that's a
tomato that's the beef so we will also associate those color that's grilled
that's a barbecue is a little bit more dark we will associate those those
color sour so the the yellow and the green and then you see also a dish which
which is is sour and looks sour or bitter and bitter we don't like so by
genetics we don't like acidity and bitterness because acidity can be
fermentation possible toxic bitter can be like toxic ingredients like like those
berries we never eat those berries because by genetics it's not by learning
it's really by genetics if you do the test with with children just born new
born they they will hate better flavors so then you can make like a
combination so we have sweet salty sour bitter umami and then the colors
associated to it so for example you see red can be sweet or umami but when red
is in combination with for example yellow and pink then it will be sweet
blue will be mainly be salty and when you have green and yellow it will be a it
will be sour so we can put products on top of it and see the relation between
the products we eat and association we make the food taste like sour so you
will associate those colors with with sour and if you do it wrong then you will
hate it that's I know there's really more extreme but what we for example tell
to bartenders if if your cocktail is sweet don't use sour sour colors
because before you even taste the cocktail your brains will really have
made a judgment that the cocktail will be sour and when you taste it and in a
sweet it will not fit maybe you will not know what is wrong with it but it will
not fit it's only high-end chefs who can permit themself to play with this like
Heston has some dishes where he changing with colors and taste but that's more
like in a play in the in the normal world in restaurants in bistros in
cocktail bars you should have the fit between the color and the taste so let's
see if you got it so the white is one the green is two the red is three and the
blue is four these are four times the same popcorn okay which popcorn will
taste the most salty who says one white
two green three red and four blue well it is four because if he if he scroll
back actually the blue is most associated with with salty so in the
blue cup the popcorn will taste most salty let's not experiment imagine you're
in a bar and we can play with the colors we have like a white red a blue and a
green color and you have wine in a glass and the glass is not transparent is
black so you can't see the color of the wine so you will get the same wine in
the same glass four times one with a white color with a blue red and a green
color so how will this wine change from the other ones this one will be the
most sweet yeah so and if you do the test you actually see that just by
changing the color of the environment the same wine just the same wine well
statistically be more sweeter perceived than when you have different colors so
actually when you play with the colors in your bar or in in your restaurant you
can really influence how people perceive the food so it also be more
fruitiness but that's linked to a to the sweetness and as we like sweetness the
most that will also be liked the most okay so color has a really big influence
on how you perceive a food product is that only the color it's also for
example the weight so if you would eat a yogurt with these spoons so some plastic
spoons and then a stainless steel spoon the stainless steel spoon is heavier
because of its heavier people will associate that yogurt being better
although it's the same yogurt the reason why when you drink whiskey and it's a
heavy glass is it will taste more premium and there's a whole myth about the
shape of the glasses and influencing the aroma that's only true for really
experts it's not true for the average consumer if I gave you the same wine and
different glasses but I blindfold you you will say it's the same wine when I
gave you the same glasses not blindfolded it will be have a different
flavor it's just in the perception so this is also with a menu card if a menu
card is light or heavy a heavy menu card will be more expensive better so the
weight has an influence on how you perceive the food also the the taste so
in the in the second one the sea there's four times the same cheese part of
cheese which cheese will taste the most salty the most sharp
anyone for anybody else to the the second one will taste the most sharp and
salty the four is more like a normal way of eating cheese so you will not
associate something different with it but eating a cheese from a knife like
this will make the cheese more salty and more sharp so again the the spoon you
eat with will influence how you perceive the food there are also interaction
between the material of the spoon for example and the taste like if you have a
spoon which is with bronze or with sink it will taste more better than than like
a golden or in the silver spoon so you also have that interference okay let's
go to a following interaction between hearing and seeing so that brings me to
to one story one professor very active on this multi-sensorial experiments and
research is a Charles Spence from Oxford University and he's working with
Heston Blumenthal and Heston had one had either ones an oyster at the sea I
also have it when you drink a glass wine when your vacation and you take the same
wine at home and you taste the same wine it's not the same anymore so also when
you eat an oyster at the sea the oyster will taste better when you eat then when
you eat the same oyster for example in the restaurant so Heston wanted to to
check if it is true and if there are not ways to to have the same experience at
the restaurant so what they have done with the professor Charles Spence is
they have done the following experiment they have taken oysters and giving the
same parts of the same oyster one with rock music one with silence and one with
the sound of the sea so the of the sea so what do you guess statistically you
can show that the oyster with the sound of the sea is scored better people love
this oyster much much more although is this the same oyster than with the rock
music or with without sound so that brought Heston into the idea of let's
add sound to the restaurant so when you're eating this dish which is called
the sound of the sea and also visual you see like sand which is like a crumble
and you have the foam of the sea and you see sea fruit and algae so already
visual you're at the sea and then you have the sound of the sea so and you
have the seagulls flying by and you're in the restaurant and while eating this
dish you have this whole experience and it's really great I remember myself I
was quite skeptical before I'm a scientist rational but while sitting
there really it does something with with the person so you really perceive this
dish in a in a different way and that brought us also to other ideas so when
we present when we launched the food pairing website and in 2007 and a number
of items was at the at the end in Spain at Lome Horla gastronomy one of the
items we say was a food pairing well break through that's an important one
all those in numbers forget it let's go for natural and you can obtain the same
gels just by using enzymes which are already in your food and the third one
was we don't like the tableware which is there for the moment they're all dull
they don't do anything it's nothing fun about it so the first one we did was we
we added a coating on the on the plates so you had the the doop droplets in the
morning so the idea was to create a dish with droplets and that you were like
walking into an a garden full with apples and you would smell the apple and
would taste the apple and different textures of apple and you would have
the sounds of a of the morning so that was a first one a second one and then
we went a step further and we took actually lab on chip technology is why
not program how droplets are moving and so what we have done is we have
programmed a glass surface that we can reduce the surface tension so that we
can program how droplets are moving so that's a rice dessert by Sergio Herman
and the droplets are droplets of water infused with different types of
citrus fruit so you can program how the droplets are moving now it's in a
straight line but you could also make turns or mixes or or whatever so you
can go quite crazy with using technology from another sector like lab on chip
and apply that into a plate I will skip this one this one is a very nice one
this is from Rocca which is the number one in the world and you have three
brothers and youngest is youngest is a is Jordi he's a pastry chef and he loves
FC Barcelona so he wanted to make one of the experience this one famous goal
that Messi is making a goal against Real Madrid where he's starting from his
own half and going to the all the players and his course so they want to
recreate that into the dish and I'll show you the the movie
Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi and Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi multiplied Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Mother of God
God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God
So it's a really a great experience
So, and also what you eat, they want to recreate the emotion that Messi should have when he
scored the goal.
So, it's a dish with mint and passion fruit, something refreshing, vitalizing.
And there are shifts going even a step further, this is Paco Roncero in the Thayer of Paco
Roncero, and they can work with, they can change the temperature in the room, they can
change the color, you have projection, they have flavor, they can regulate everything
per person.
It's a very expensive experience, but it's worthwhile, like when I was there, so you're
sitting at a table, and so for example, they start to project like you're at a sea.
So, from one moment to another, you're wearing a swimming suit, and you're at your foot in
the sea, and then you get foot, which is related to the sea.
So the whole experience, and you have the flavors and the sounds, so it's really, really
great.
So, let's try, I know for a big audience like this, it's very difficult to recreate something
like that.
The smell will be, you have to imagine it for yourself.
But you have the last chocolate, so we will show you a movie, and one moment in the movie,
you will see, eat now, and then the idea is that you put the chocolate into your mouth.
Okay?
So you're in the forest, and you're smelling the sound of a forest, so some humid earth,
and you're smelling the sound of a forest, and you're smelling the sound of a forest,
and you're smelling the sound of a forest, and you're smelling the sound of a forest.
So I hope you liked this experience.
I hope you're convinced that food is not just food, that food is actually what you make
of it.
That even before you taste something, your brains have already made a judgment of how
it will taste like, and this will actually experience the food as it is.
So I would like to thank you for your attention, and maybe have a look at the food pairing website.
Thank you very much.
