This Food Scientist Can Hack Your Dinner

I'm sitting in the corner of Parlour, a restaurant in London's Kensal Green, with headphones on. The iconic theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey blasts in my ears and head chef Jesse Dunford Wood rolls foil across the table in front of me. As the track segues into "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Wood begins placing macarons, Arctic rolls, soufflés, cakes, and mousses on the foil between artful globs of sauce from a squeezy bottle—all in time with the music.

Sitting to my right and watching Wood's performance is Charles Spence, food scientist and professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford. He mimes for me to lift my headphones.

"This is similar to how the Italian Futurists threw dinner parties!" he says excitedly, pointing to the foil, which is now covered with brightly coloured treats and sauce.

But more on Wood's theatrical puddings and European anarchists later. I'm not here just to spoon chocolate mousse from the table, I'm meeting with Spence to talk about his new book, Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, and discover the science that explains why listening to music, watching a chef throw sauce around, or eating off foil can enhance flavour.

London chef Jesse Dunford Wood serves dessert on tin foil in time with music that plays over diners' headphones, a choreographed performance intended to enhance flavour. All photos by the author.

In the introduction to his book, Spence explains that gastrophysics "can be defined as the scientific study of those factors that influence our multisensory experience while tasting food and drink." Basically, if you take the food away from a dining experience, gastrophysics is how everything else—from descriptions of dishes on the menu and the restaurant's decor to plateware, cutlery, and music—affect our enjoyment of food.

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