Culinary fluid mechanics and other currents in food science

Innovations in fluid mechanics have been leading to better food since ancient history, while creativity in cooking has inspired fundamental breakthroughs in science. This review addresses how recent advances in hydrodynamics are changing food science and the culinary arts and, reciprocally, how the surprising phenomena that arise in the kitchen are leading to new discoveries across the disciplines, including molecular gastronomy, rheology, soft matter, biophysics, medicine, and nanotechnology. This review is structured like a menu, where each course highlights different aspects of culinary fluid mechanics. Our main themes include multiphase flows, complex fluids, thermal convection, hydrodynamic instabilities, viscous flows, granular matter, porous media, percolation, chaotic advection, interfacial phenomena, and turbulence. For every topic, an introduction and its connections to food are provided, followed by a discussion of how science could be made more accessible and inclusive. The state-of-the-art knowledge is then assessed, the open problems, along with the likely directions for future research and indeed future dishes. New ideas in science and gastronomy are growing rapidly side by side.

Automated summary

Innovations in fluid mechanics have been improving food throughout history, while creative cooking has led to breakthroughs in science. This review explores how recent advancements in hydrodynamics are impacting food science and culinary arts, as well as how kitchen-related phenomena are driving discoveries in various disciplines such as molecular gastronomy, rheology, and nanotechnology. The paper takes a menu-like structure, focusing on different aspects of culinary fluid mechanics, and discusses the accessibility and inclusivity of scientific knowledge. It also assesses the current state-of-the-art and presents future research directions in both science and gastronomy.