French chef debuts 'world's first entirely synthetic gourmet dish'

London, Apr 20 (ANI): Popular French chef Pierre Gagnaire has created what he claims to be the world's first entirely synthetic gourmet dish.

The dish-a starter of jelly balls in apple and lemon flavours that are creamy on the inside and crisp on the outside-is making its debut in Hong Kong. Entitled le note a note, the recipe is a combination of ascorbic acid, glucose, citric acid and a few grams of 4-O-a-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol, a sugar substitute otherwise known as maltitol.

And the result, according to Gagnaire, is a starter of jelly balls tasting of apple and lemon- creamy on the inside and crackling on the outside.

According to reports, Gagnaire, who has three Michelin stars, has worked for months with Herve This, the founder of molecular gastronomy, to finally come up with the dish.

"It is good. It's going to be smooth, crusty and frosty," Times Online quoted Gagnaire as saying.

The main meal, a lobster fricassee, will be served with polyphenol sauce-which is also invented by Gagnaire and This, is made of tartaric acid, glucose and polyphenols.

According to This, the meal would be a step into the future of haute cuisine.

He said that in this brave new world, chefs would shun vegetables, such as carrots, and would instead use the molecules, which make up carrots - caroteniods, pectins, fructose and glucuronic acid - instead.

"If you use pure compounds, you open up billions and billions of new possibilities. It's like a painter using primary colours or a musician composing note by note," said This.

He told the paper that compound cooking would not only taste good but also end food shortages and rural poverty because farmers could increase profitability by "fractioning their vegetables". (ANI)