Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The International Culinary Center

Common Sense and the New Cooking Science<

The eagerly anticipated debate was titled “Traditionalist Versus Modern Cuisine,” about the controversy over the new molecular gastronomy. But for a discussion of what is often called a culinary revolution, it turned out to be a surprising celebration of traditionalism.

For ages, “the techniques of cooking have been about taking the raw ingredients of the kitchen and making them into something wonderful,” said Nathan Myhrvold, the author of “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking,” the recently published six-volume, 40-pound high-and-low-tech food encyclopedia, which retails for $625.

Though his book served as the text for the proceedings Tuesday night at the International Culinary Center in Manhattan, the six panelists’ conversation on the relationship among food, art and technology hardly mentioned the tools of the nouveau science-fiction kitchen: foams, gels, nitrogen for flash-freezing, alginates for spherification, immersion circulators and antigriddle cooktops for low-temperature cooking.

Even the potential dangers of cutting-edge cookery were lowballed, as when Dr. Myrhvold pronounced that liquid nitrogen, frigid though it may be, is less dangerous than spattering fry oil. Or as Wylie Dufresne, the chef and owner of WD-50, put it, liquid nitrogen is “unlikely to freeze your customers to death, and hot soup in the dining room is more of a danger.” He added, “As with scissors, proper training is important.”

The other panelists were Dave Arnold, the director of culinary technology at the culinary center (which is the parent organization to the French Culinary Institute); Andre Soltner, dean of classic studies at the culinary center; Johnny Iuzzini, the executive pastry chef at Jean Georges, who has given his notice for Jan. 1; and Marion Nestle, professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University.

Mr. Soltner, the panel’s most unapologetic traditionalist, gamely said of Dr. Myhrvold’s book, “I’m going to read it, but I won’t say I’ll finish it.” Soon, Mr. Iuzzini sought to clarify the debate over “Modernist Cuisine” by saying that “the book isn’t competing against traditionalism — we all respect the classics. But everything has to evolve.”

Beyond that, the book’s “value does not lie in the whiz-bangery,” Mr. Dufresne said. “Arguments about foams and gels will come and go, but that is just a sidebar — and these are just the toys,” he said of high-tech gear. “The value is that we are learning at a more accelerated rate than ever before. Information is trickling down, and we’re getting smarter.”

So, if the book’s highly detailed, food-science approach to cooking may not seem relevant to the ordinary kitchen schlepper, “all techniques were new techniques at one point,” Mr. Iuzzini said, mentioning sautéeing and braising. “So one day these new techniques, like sous vide, will be more accessible to the home cook. In the end, all we’re trying to do is create great food.”

As for the misapplication of high-tech procedures in a gimmicky way by unimaginative chefs, Dr. Myhrvold — a multimillionaire inventor and the former chief technology officer at Microsoft — said new techniques would “be misused, yes, but old techniques have been misused as well.”

Therefore, Mr. Iuzzini said, if the Myhrvold book “is not read with pure eyes and clear intent, you are going to be misguided.” Mr. Soltner put it another way: “Recipes are only the basis for cuisine,” adding, “Really, in the end, it is the one who cooks.” And in answer to a question, Dr. Myhrvold said that although he dined at modernist restaurants, “if you go to a steakhouse, you want tradition — you don’t go there to discover what the new definition of ‘rare’ means.”

What of his next project? “We’re trying to figure out what we’ll do next,” he said, dropping a hint. “In our book we don’t do pastry and baking.”

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