To create his megacookbook Modernist Cuisine, Nathan Myhrvold assembled a team of chef-researchers and built the most high tech kitchen ever created—they called it the Cooking Lab. The chefs included (from left) Sam Fahey-Burke, coauthor Chris Young, coauthor Maxime Bilet, Grant Crilly, and Anjana Shanker. (Chef Johnny Zhu is not pictured.) Stocked with traditional equipment and an astonishing array of gear more suited for a laboratory, the Cooking Lab became the site of unprecedented research into the physics of cuisine. Some of the highlights of Myhrvold’s collection include: (1) immersion circulators and water baths for sous vide cooking, the technique that set Myhrvold on his cookbook quest. The ultrasonic bath (2), more commonly used to clean jewelry and lab equipment, became a key tool in the creation of the lab’s french fries. (They also use it to brew tea.) The combi-oven (3), one of the most powerful tools in the kitchen, can function like a regular oven—providing finely
adjustable dry heat—but temperature and humidity can be independently controlled, giving chefs the ability not only to bake and roast but also steam and cook sous vide in the oven. Instead of straining or filtering materials, the Cooking Lab team uses a centrifuge (4) to separate and extract unique ingredients like pea butter, the small amount of fat in peas. A rotary evaporator (5) distills small amounts of essential oils; unlike a regular still, it keeps the distillate at a low enough temperature to retain the volatile components that ordinarily disappear. Everything from prawn powder to carrot chunks comes out of the freeze-dryer (6), a clever way of concentrating flavor without heating food. And while Myhrvold and his team love pressure cookers, they don’t rely only on stove-top versions. They use an autoclave (7), more often deployed to sterilize medical equipment, as the world’s most expensive way of creating stock and soups.—Mark McClusky
