Blinded By Science

On this week's show, we meet some mad scientists of the culinary world and uncover some of the greatest technical secrets of the kitchen and bar. We begin with culinary inventor Dave Arnold at New York’s former Booker and Dax, whose collaborations with Chef Wylie Dufresne have resulted in magical molecular gastronomy. He tells us about some of his wildest experiments in the kitchen.

Then, we visit with food scientist and scholar Harold McGee, whose 1984 culinary tome On Food and Cooking remains a kitchen classic more than three decades after it's original publication. Harold demystifies food chemistry and discusses the science of some household staples.

Next, we join New Orleans chef and culinary chemist Phillip Lopez in the science lab he calls a kitchen to learn how he blends physics and chemistry to create experimental menus.

And we'll speak with Ted Breaux about how he channeled his training as an environmental chemist to begin distilling absinthe in New Orleans, eventually helping to legalize it nationally.