Science will take the joy out of cooking and eating

Even as the iconic Iberian restaurant El Bulli, the Mecca of molecular gastronomy, prepares to down shutters forever, the penchant for deconstructing food obviously remains undiminished. Why else would a British bread company's decision to finance 'research' at the University of Leeds to determine how to make a perfect toast result in the popping up of the Maillard Revelation and Vogel's Curve?

The former may be the heat-induced reaction between an amino acid and sugars that causes browning discovered by a French chemist a century ago, but for those not interested in crummy theories, the prescription of 216 seconds of 154-degree Celsius heat in a toaster for the 'perfect' toast is quite superfluous.

No matter how evocatively the Vogel's Curve mathematically plots the ratio of crunchiness to colour, ultimately perfection lies in the individual taste of the consumer. Some may prefer it singed to a crackly crisp while others may prefer the barest shimmer of a tan on a white surface. Still others could insist that every other yeasty delight crumbles before the flattened, charred charm of a tawa-toasted Indian 'slice'.

That too, slathered with more butter than the 0.44 gm/inch determined by 'research' to be the optimum amount to safeguard a perfect toast's 12:1 external-internal crunchiness differential. Interestingly, in 2003 the same university - then commissioned by a butter brand - had also determined that toast is best spread unevenly with butter straight from the refrigerator within 2 minutes of it exiting the toaster but the coating should not exceed 1/17th the thickness of the bread. Clearly, the mystery and magic of cooking and the individualistic joy of eating will soon be toast. Unless we let the final word go to the human tongue!