Note-by-Note Cooking is a landmark in the annals of gastronomy, liberating cooks from the constraints of traditional ingredients and methods through the use of pure molecular compounds. 1-Octen-3-ol, which has a scent of wild mushrooms; limonene, a colorless liquid hydrocarbon that has the smell of citrus; sotolon, whose fragrance at high concentrations resembles curry and at low concentrations, maple syrup or sugar; tyrosine, an odorless but flavorful amino acid present in cheese--these and many other substances, some occurring in nature, some synthesized in the laboratory, make it...

Note-by-Note Cooking is a landmark in the annals of gastronomy, liberating cooks from the constraints of traditional ingredients and methods through the use of pure molecular compounds. 1-Octen-3-ol, which has a scent of wild mushrooms; limonene, a colorless liquid hydrocarbon that has the smell of citrus; sotolon, whose fragrance at high concentrations resembles curry and at low concentrations, maple syrup or sugar; tyrosine, an odorless but flavorful amino acid present in cheese--these and many other substances, some occurring in nature, some synthesized in the laboratory, make it...