WH Chef Emphasizes Taste

White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses passed out fast-dissolving breath strips labelled with flavors like “Regret” and “Mommy” at his Monday lecture, “Lip Smackin’ Science: Crystals, Emulsions, Foams, and Pink Vanilla Cupcakes.”

Yosses used the strips to emphasize the importance of taste in cooking—even when experimenting with the techniques of molecular gastronomy.

“Taste is the standard that we will always go back to,” he said.

Najat Kaanache, a Spanish-born chef, joined Yosses for the presentation.

The two met while Kaanache was studying at Ferran Adrià’s Spanish concept restaurant El Bulli.

During the presentation Yosses and Kaanache created several experimental dishes, including a grape sorbet frozen with liquid nitrogen and a chocolate mousse made from an emulsion of chocolate and water.

The chefs provided the crowd with samples of olives that had undergone “spherification,” a modernist cuisine technique in which a chemical process renders food into a sphere that resembles caviar.

In his post at the White House, Yosses is responsible for overseeing the management and preparation of all pastries and desserts served at White House functions, from formal dinners to the first family’s private meals.

Yosses said that the Obama family received his experimental cooking warmly, but that foams do not often find their way onto the dessert menu at State Dinners.

“This wouldn’t be appropriate for 90 percent of the guests who come to the White House,” Yosses said. “They’re looking for more traditional tastes.”

“Because this kind of modern cuisine is so visually different from what people are used to, I think people are uncomfortable with it.” Yosses said. “But I think it’s going to influence chefs for years to come.”

Yosses’ visit comes as a part of the lecture series inspired by the General Education course “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter.”

The “Science and Cooking” class aims to teach students about the properties of matter through lectures and labs that focus on “molecular gastronomy.”