Special Report
Heston high and dry The celebrity chef phenomenon by Professor Peter Jones
When I was at hotel school forty years ago, chefs were neither seen nor heard. More recently it seems that anyone who is handy with a blow torch and
can tear up salad stuffs is front page news. You will guess from this that I am not a great fan of TV chefs nor their programmes. Today the trend is to get the celebrity
chef out of the kitchen and turn them into consultants who can solve the nation’s catering problems – setting them loose on schools meals, hospitals, roadside dining, or now inflight catering. I am of course referring to Heston Blumenthal’s programme aired on Channel 4 in the UK, wherein he worked with BA to ‘improve’ the airline meal. As a professor I am of course always interested
in any research but what contribution did this make to our understanding of how to prepare and present airline meals? Interviewed in the Daily Mail (online March
4) about the programme Blumethal said: ”I always wanted to know what happens to us when we eat in the air, instead of on the ground, so the BA challenge was the hook for me taking on this whole project’. Well, if he wanted to know this he did not have to make a TV programme about it. There is a chapter in ITCA’s textbook Flight Catering on ‘Passenger Appetite and Behaviour’ that explains what happens to our sense of smell and taste on aeroplanes. Low humidity and air pressure affect how
food tastes in the air. I thought everyone in the industry knew this? After all Singapore Airlines built a special room in their flight kitchen to simulate flying conditions, specifically for tasting wines and food on the ground. Clearly the Daily Mail reporter (or Blumenthal himself) still do not quite get it because the Mail article proposes – “Food in a pressurised cabin tastes different to being on the ground, due to the lack of humidity. The sense of smell is what gives food its flavour and it’s regulated by the moisture in our nostrils”. Wrong. First, the pressurised cabin does not create
low humidity. Second, both the relatively low air cabin pressure and low humidity affects taste. Third, air pressure affects how the taste buds in the mouth function, whilst low humidity affects taste and the sense of smell. Fourth, flavour does not derive solely from our sense of smell. Hence BA were right to reject Blumenthal’s suggestion that nasal sprays would ‘solve the problem’, they would have only a marginal effect on food taste. In the programme, Blumethal conducted an experiment. He tried to see if food would be fresher if cooked from scratch on the aircraft itself. He reports ‘It was carnage because there was no space’. Really?
Some Heston Blumenthal advice for British Airways cabin crew Finally, Blumenthal is reported as saying: “I
was trying to show what physically happens to the food when it’s reheated in the plane”. The answer to this is also well known. The
cook chill food system has been in existence for well over 30 years and a great deal of research has been done into it. It does not matter too much if the food is reheated on the ground or in the air, the process is the same. Of course, there is the effect of low air pressure on boiling point. We all learned Boyle’s Law at school – as pressure decreases water boils at a lower temperature. This is something that airlines, beverage machine manufacturers and coffee vendors have been struggling to deal with for years. In summary, this programme was very cleverly directed and edited to create televisual ‘drama’. In the big scheme of things does it matter? Well, I think it matters enough to devote this article to it. Why? First, it makes us – industry professionals and experts – look ignorant. Second, and much more importantly, it treats the audience as children. Finally, in the cause of entertainment, it misinforms. email:
p.jones@
surrey.ac.uk
www.onboardhospitality.com 35
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