2. Molecular cuisine

The forerunner of today's "cocottes minutes", the "digesteur", was proposed by Denis Papin in 1679: the aim was to make hard meat edible, to add value to bones, and to produce jellies that were then thought to be nutritious. In so doing, Papin introduced a new utensil into the kitchen, just as Benjamin Thompson, knighted in 1784 as Count Rumford, did for fireplaces and coffee makers.

This idea of renovating culinary techniques had other propagators, notably the British physicist Nicholas Kurti (Budapest, 1908 – Oxford, 1998), who in 1969 proposed introducing into the kitchen some of the utensils used in physics laboratories