MICHAEL: OK.
We should start.
So thank you all for coming.
So this is, remarkably enough,
week 11 of this lecture series.
And we're very happy this week to have
Daniel Humm from Eleven Madison Park.
Who will get to speak in a minute.
And he will give a lecture
called Where is the Acid?
But before he does that,
you have to put up with me.
So we have a fun game here
in Science and Cooking.
We have a fun game in
Science and Cooking.
We play this sometimes.
It's a parlor game.
We haven't marketed it yet.
No one to my knowledge has done it.
It's called Guess the Food.
So would anyone like to guess the food?
Yes.
What?
AUDIENCE: Peanut butter.
MICHAEL: Peanut butter.
Any other guesses?
Yes, in the back?
AUDIENCE: Chocolate.
MICHAEL: Chocolate.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Bone marrow.
MICHAEL: Bone marrow.
Actually bone marrow is the closest.
This is beef.
OK.
So guess the food.
Here's another one.
It's a good game, actually.
Does anybody-- yes.
AUDIENCE: Olive oil.
MICHAEL: Say again?
AUDIENCE: Vegetable oil.
MICHAEL: Vegetable oil.
That's very good.
It's olive oil.
OK.
Very good.
So I mean, of course the way
you play the game of Guess
the Food is that you all know that
there are major molecules of food.
There are fats.
There are carbohydrates.
There are proteins.
There's water, which is not
listed on the food label.
And if you look at those and you look at
the percentages of the various things,
you can sort of guess the food.
So you guessed the vegetable oil instead
of olive oil because it was all fats.
So what do you think it is?
The question I want to raise is
what else is important for food?
That is, what else is important
in a recipe other than this?
I mean, look, if you have
a jar of water, right?
The number of molecules per liter
in that jar of water is enormous.
More than 10 to the 23.
There's about 10 to 25 molecules of
water that's in a liter of water.
It's a huge number.
But it turns out that--
and this is the idea
I want to leave you with before
I turn this over Daniel--
is that oftentimes there are
ingredients in a recipe which
are very, very low concentrations, but
yet are extremely important for taste.
And just to demonstrate this, here
is a typical recipe for lemonade.
And the question is, what
makes it taste like lemonade?
Yes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
MICHAEL: The acid.
Very good.
That was in the title of the lectures.
And where is the acid?
The acid is in the lemons.
OK.
Very good.
So in fact, the acid that's in
the lemons is called citric acid.
Here is a picture of it.
And the citric acid is this complicated
formula, this chemical formula.
And the main point of it is
that acid is something that
more easily loses protons to water.
So an acid releases protons, which
are H pluses, which go into water.
So even water, there are
protons that are in water--
I mean in the form of hydronium ions.
And the concentration of them
is one part in 10 to the seven
of the moles per liter, which
is more than 1 10 millionth.
It's actually more than that.
It's like, 1 over 550 millionth
of the molecules that are in water
are these protons.
But yet they are critically
important for taste.
This is what I want to tell you, that
even though there's so few of them,
they are critically important for taste.
And when you see Chef Daniel do magical
things with acids, then in fact,
he's adding so few protons
that if all of you in this room
were water molecules, there wouldn't
be one of you is a proton in the dish
that he makes.
They're just so few.
But yet they're critically
important for taste.
And you can control them by playing with
things that Chef Daniel will play with.
And I was going to turn
it over to Chef Daniel.
[APPLAUSE]
DANIEL HUMM: Wow.
Thank you, Michael.
How are you guys?
AUDIENCE: Good.
DANIEL HUMM: Hey, thank
you so much for coming.
Thank you for having me here.
It means a lot.
It's a great honor to
be part of this program.
And I'm excited to talk a little
bit about myself, my story,
the story of Eleven Madison Park.
And a few things that I've learned
along the way in the kitchen.
But before I start I have
a confession to make.
Me, I never finished high school.
In fact, I hated going to school.
I hated going to classes
and studying things
I knew I probably never going to use.
When I was 14 I left
school to be a cook.
Obviously, that was not a very
popular decision with my parents.
But it's been the best
thing I ever done.
The things that the path of cooking has
opened me to-- it's been unbelievable.
The people I've met along the way.
I've traveled the world, learned about
different foods and different cultures.
I learned languages.
The opportunities just
have been unbelievable.
Eight years ago I came to this
country with two suitcases mostly full
of chef clothes, cookbooks, some knives.
I had a couple hundred dollars.
I did not speak English.
Now I'm here speaking in
front of you at Harvard.
That's insane.
[APPLAUSE]
DANIEL HUMM: This is one of the best
schools in the world, maybe the best
school in the world.
This is the American dream.
When they first asked
me to speak here, I
wasn't sure if I'm the right candidate
because I'm not a public speaker.
This is totally out of my comfort zone.
I'm nervous standing up here.
I'm a cook.
The place where I feel
comfortable is the kitchen.
But as I thought a little bit
more about the opportunity,
I knew that there are definitely
things I have to share.
It's amazing how food has
changed over the past few years.
Now everyone in the world wants to know
about food, chefs, and restaurants.
When I started 25 years ago,
there was no food and science
program at Harvard, or at any school.
There was no Food Network.
There weren't all of these TV
shows, all these magazines.
For sure, there were no celebrity chefs.
Back then it was just
about the craft of cooking.
I fell in love with it because I
love the energy in the kitchen.
I love to work with fresh ingredients.
I love to work with my hands,
create something with my hands.
Cooking is very tangible.
Something my dad always
used to say, he said,
it doesn't matter when you're passionate
about something how big or small it is.
The only thing that
matters is how much effort
you're willing to put towards that.
And that's what's
cooking has been for me.
And that is what Eleven
Madison Park represents today.
I have this clicker here in my hand,
been holding it really awkwardly.
I've never used one of those.
So I just gonna give it to Mike.
To put something together like
this, or to do anything great,
it always takes a team.
And I want to say thank
you to a few people
that help have helped a lot with this.
I want to say thank you to Mike Pyers.
I want to say thank you to Connie Chung.
Both of them are chefs
at our restaurant,
and are in charge of all the
research and development.
I want to say thank you
to Aaron Ginsberg, who is
our director for strategic development.
And he has spent hours with me
practicing this, literally hours.
I wanna say thank you to [? Ali ?]
[? Busari ?] who is a friend
and the scientist who
helped so much with this,
and made sure we have
all the facts right.
I also want to say thank you to
my business partner, Will Guidara,
and my best friend.
I want to say thank you to a few things.
On one side, I want to say thank you
to create the culture of hospitality
and service that has set new
standards in our industry,
because we can talk about food
and work our time in the kitchen,
but if the hospitality and the
service sucks, it all doesn't matter.
So thank you for that.
In addition, I want to say thank you for
supporting me, teaching me, pushing me
to do things I never thought I could.
I also want to say thank
you to my girlfriend, Cara,
and her mom, who are both here today.
Because we can have all the
support professionally and at work,
but you also need the support at home.
So please give a hand of
applause to all of them.
[APPLAUSE]
So let me give you a little
context about the restaurant.
Eleven Madison Park is in
the heart of Manhattan.
It's on Madison Avenue and 24th Street.
It's in a beautiful art deco building.
The building is occupying
an entire city block.
In fact, the building
was supposed to become
the tallest building in the
world, when it was built in 1928.
But due to the Great Depression,
the build was halted.
But what we ended up with is
this incredible dining room.
30-foot tall ceilings,
huge windows overlooking
Madison Square Park, one of the
most beautiful parks in New York.
You even can see the Flatiron Building.
Imagine this dining room was supposed
to be the lobby of the tallest
building in the world.
There is no other restaurant
with a better view than ours.
It's such a New York space,
such a New York room.
So it's important that through the
experience we pay homage to our food
and through the delivery of
the food to the place we're in.
Our inspiration comes from fishermen,
farmers, artisans all around New York.
What people don't
realize when they think
about New York-- all they think of is
Manhattan and this concrete jungle.
But we're on the Atlantic
coast, which is one
of the most amazing waters for seafood.
Also, when you drive just
a half an hour north,
you reach farmland for hours
and hours and miles and miles.
The Hudson Valley, the Finger Lakes
have some of the most amazing conditions
for agriculture, because of its
soil, the surrounding waters,
and its amazing climate.
But in addition what we
have, we have New York City.
Hundreds of years of history.
Immigrants from all over the
world came to settle this place.
They all brought food traditions.
These traditions have evolved, and
new traditions have been created.
Eating at Eleven Madison
Park is the intersection--
I can hear my business partner,
Will, laugh through the [INAUDIBLE].
It's the intersection between, on one
side we have these amazing ingredients,
the amazing agriculture,
and on the other side
we have this rich history and culture
of New York, the place that is our home.
But that's not why I am here today.
I'm here to talk about
acid, and acids in food.
Where is the acid?
My staff hears me say this more
than they probably care to remember.
But where is the acid is
really the central question
when we create a new dish.
When seasoning foods,
everyone talks about salt.
I believe acid is just as important--
maybe more important-- than salt.
When I grew up in Switzerland, I
was always drawn to acidic foods.
I love tomatoes.
I love citrus fruits.
I love pickles.
My mom's cooking-- sauerkraut, roasted
chicken with lemon and rosemary.
She made a braised rabbit with
olives, orange, and pickled onions.
I never knew exactly why I
was drawn to these dishes
so much, why they were my favorite.
But looking back it makes
sense, because there
was presence of acid, which gave it
balance, and it highlighted the food.
At Eleven Madison Park, why
does this matter so much?
Well, I think acid
catches your attention.
I think when you taste acid,
it kind of wakes you up.
And it just makes food better.
Acid just makes food better.
At Eleven Madison we serve tasting
menus-- 14, 15, 16 courses.
It's important that all
these dishes have acid.
We use acid from so
many different sources.
But it keeps the guest excited.
It keeps the meal lighter.
And it makes the guest want more.
Our food is different than, let's
say, traditional French food,
where it relies heavily
on butter, cream, and fat.
Until a few years ago, we
never really thought too much
about the amounts of acid we were using.
But then we started kind
of digging into our food
and trying to understand
our food a little bit more.
And we realized that the acid is
the foundation of our cuisine.
And as we dug even deeper,
we realized that acid
was doing so many other things.
And these three things I
want to tell you today about.
Number one, acid affects
the flavor in food.
Number two, acid affects
the structure in food.
And number three, we use
acid to preserve food.
Let's get into flavor.
Obviously flavor comes first.
It's the most important to us.
We want the food to be delicious.
When we add acid to food, it changes
how you perceive the other basic tastes.
It interacts with the saltiness, the
sweetness, with umami, and with bitter.
A great example for this-- and
I'm sure you've all seen it--
but sometimes you get an
espresso with a slice of lemon.
That lemon is there to squeeze
lemon juice in the espresso.
What it does, you add
sour to the bitter.
And it makes you perceive
the bitter as less bitter.
Thankfully, coffee has gotten
a lot better over the years,
so you don't see that that much anymore.
But that was the reason why.
We also looked at some
manufactured foods.
Coca-Cola, soy sauce, ketchup.
All of these rely heavily on
acid for the same reason--
it balances the sugar, the saltiness.
But here is something else.
It also makes food have
a better shelf life.
These ingredients sometimes sit
on the shelf for two, three years.
Really, two, three years.
And you taste it, and you still
sort of feel like they're fresh.
Acid also affects the aroma in food.
And that is really important
for us in the kitchen.
We play with this all the time.
Let's say we make a lemon sorbet.
Let's say we make a lemon
sorbet just using lemon juice.
That's like every lemon
sorbet that's out there.
It's good.
It's a good lemon sorbet.
But let's say we also introduce
aroma to this lemon sorbet.
And the way we do it, the sugar that
is required to make that sorbet,
we take sugar cubes and we rub it on the
skin of those lemons, and then season
the sorbet with that.
So now we're also introducing aroma.
And now when you taste that lemon
sorbet, you smell that lemon sorbet,
and it elevates the
flavor of that sorbet.
The same thing happens
when you peel a grapefruit.
I'm sure you've all peeled
grapefruit before, before you eat it.
When you peel it, the aromas,
the oils, they're on your hands.
They hit your nose.
And by the time you eat that
grapefruit, it tastes unbelievable.
The best grapefruit you ever had.
It tastes much better than a
grapefruit you would just get served
on a plate that's been pre-sliced.
In cocktails we use it a lot.
If you're at the bar,
and you're ordering
a Manhattan-- I don't know if you're
old enough, everyone in here--
but if you have a
Manhattan, the bartender,
at the very end of serving you
that drink, adds a twist of orange.
That twist of orange,
that aroma hits your nose,
it elevates the flavor of that drink.
All these things happen
because your brain
is making a connection between
what it tastes and what it smells.
It elevates the experience.
It's like going from
black and white to color.
We have some bags here for you.
And I'm sorry, Michael,
you know, we weren't
quite as prepared as I wanted to.
But we disturbed your talk a
little bit to bring in these bags.
But here you have it.
Please grab in these bags.
There are two small bottles.
I want you just take out
the two small bottles.
OK.
And now put the bag back down.
We're gonna taste these.
I would like to taste these as well.
Thank you.
In these two bottles we have soda.
We've made a lot of different
sodas over the years.
Celery soda, cherry soda,
coffee soda, strawberry soda.
But for here for you
today, we have maple soda.
I want to taste the first one
without the sticker on it.
It definitely tastes like maple syrup.
But it tastes really sweet also.
In fact, it's good, but I wouldn't
really want to drink this soda.
It's too sweet.
It's not balanced.
Let's taste the other one.
And it's pretty impressive, our
team filled all these small bottles
this afternoon.
And even I don't know-- yeah.
[APPLAUSE]
Even more impressive is
that they're still cold.
Let's taste this one.
These sodas are made
exactly the same way.
It's the same recipe.
There's one change.
And this soda, for me, tastes a lot
less sweet, a lot more balanced,
a lot more delicious.
Kind of like what you want soda to be.
We added, in this case, apple
cider vinegar to balance this out.
So this is an example
I wanted to give you,
because it kind of is a strong example.
And the soda goes from really not
really drinkable to delicious.
In food it's not always this extreme.
It can be much more subtle.
But it can elevate-- the
right amount of acid--
can elevate the experience of a dish.
Let's talk about our first dish here.
This dish is a seafood boil.
It's inspired by seafood boil you would
have out by the water on the ocean.
This seafood is extremely fresh.
There's prawns, lobster, clams.
It's amazing seafood.
You could just steam that and eat
it, and it would be delicious.
But what we do, we cook it in a
broth of lemon, beer, and tomato.
We then bring it out to the dining room,
and we put a big wooden board right
in the middle of the table.
We take that seafood and we
dump it right onto that board.
We're asking our guests to eat
this dish with their hands.
But before they do, we're asking
them to squeeze some fresh lemon
over that seafood.
So now we're introducing
aroma to already the acid
that we introduced during cooking.
It elevates that seafood
and makes it a better dish.
Our next dish is a roasted duck.
This dish is on the menu all the time.
These are these amazing ducks
we get up from the Finger Lakes.
We're really proud of the
product and the preparation.
It's glazed with honey.
On this picture we serve it with
rutabaga, whipped honey, some bee
pollen, and then a sauce that is made
with caramelized sugar, duck choux,
and there's four acids in this sauce.
We have lemon juice, lime juice,
orange juice, and vinegar.
The duck is gamy,
meaty, fatty, and rich.
Now we're also adding sugar in the
form of the honey and in the sauce.
So it's really, really important that
we're playing with a lot of acids.
And it's sort of like the
sensation of sweet and sour.
Here we have oysters.
We get these oysters from Long Island.
They're two hours away
from our restaurant.
We get them every day.
And they're as fresh
as an oyster can be.
You could just shuck them and
eat them right out of the shell.
And it would be delicious.
These oyster are served with
champagne grapes, a [? snow ?]
that we make with Concord grape
juice and red wine vinegar.
And we also have sorrell.
A lot of the guests come
up to me and say, wow.
These are the freshest
oysters I ever had.
Or they come to me and say, wow.
The combination of oysters
and grapes is unbelievable.
And that's cool.
But what they're really responding
to is the high amounts of acid
that is in the [? snow ?].
And it makes them believe-- they've
had oysters this fresh before--
but the high amounts of acid
makes them believe that these
are the freshest oysters they ever had.
It's the same thing that we
talked about manufactured foods.
They add acid to make
shitty food taste better.
But if we use that, and we
use the best ingredients
that we can get our hands on, and
we're adding acid in the right amount,
we can make a great product
into an unbelievable product.
Here we have the second one.
Structure.
Just like we did with this spoon,
acid changes the structure in food.
We took this spoon, we bent it, it
changes the function of the spoon.
Here we have milk.
We're adding acid.
We're changing the structure
of the molecules in that milk,
and it turns it into curd.
This is the basics of cheese-making.
I want to show you this
in one of our dishes
where we use that to our advantage.
Here, are all the way on the left
side, you see a pot with milk.
And there's some hay in it.
And the hay is there to flavor the milk.
And there's also lemon
juice in that milk.
Now we're bringing that
milk up to temperature.
And you can see how
it starts to separate.
Then we're straining it.
So now we have the curd on one side,
and the whey on the other side.
The whey usually is a byproduct,
and it gets thrown out.
But what I love about this dish is
how we bring these two ingredients
back together.
We're making a gnocchi.
We're taking the curd and
we roll it in semolina.
We're taking the whey and make
it into a really flavorful broth.
We serve the gnocchi with
some beautiful greens.
And we pour the broth table side.
This is a dish of scallops.
And it's a raw scallop just marinated.
We get these amazing scallops.
We open them fresh out of the shell.
They're still alive.
We marinate them with green apple
juice so the scallop firms up.
It changes the structure
in those scallops.
And Michael was just flying through
this thing, but he touched on ceviche.
But it's the same thing
that happens with ceviche.
The lemon, lime, or pineapple juice.
It changes the structure
in that seafood,
and it gives it a different texture.
The apple juice that we use to marinate
this scallop is also affected by that.
We're adding citric ascorbic
acid to this apple juice.
And we use it because it's
close to flavor neutral.
But the addition of ascorbic acid keeps
the apple juice from turning brown.
This is the same thing that
happens when you make a guacamole.
You add lemon to that avocado
so it doesn't turn brown.
The same thing can happen with
mushrooms, or when you peel artichokes.
Here we have egg yolks.
I love eggs.
Eggs Is probably one of the most
versatile ingredient that we work with.
And all the way on the left side,
the top part is a raw egg yolk.
On the bottom, we open it up
so we show you the consistency.
Egg yolks are extremely creamy.
But we try to find a way, how
can we make it even creamier?
In the middle, we took
the egg yolk on the top,
and we marinated it in white
balsamic vinegar for two days.
On the bottom, in the
middle, we open it up
to show you the change in consistency.
That egg yolk got thicker, creamier.
And then we took it even further.
All the way on the
right is an yolk that's
been sitting in white balsamic
vinegar for seven days.
And you can see on the bottom
picture, all the way on the right,
that now the egg yolk is
barely liquid anymore.
It's gotten a lot firmer.
And that's pretty cool.
Here, this is an experiment
that we did just for today.
This is red cabbage.
And red cabbage is functioning
like a natural pH meter.
We added acids and we added alkalines.
And just based on those colors,
you can see the change in pH.
All the way on the left, we added white
wine vinegar, the most acidic things
we added off all of them.
Then we added white wine.
The third one, we actually just added
cabbage juice as being the neutral one.
And then we're adding alkalines,
which the blue one is baking soda.
Then we added lye.
And then we added bleach.
Obviously you don't want to eat this.
But this is really cool.
Just by the change of pH,
the color changes-- and these
are bright colors-- dramatically.
This happens with other things, too.
For example, a blueberry muffin.
You've all had blueberry muffins.
When you look at a blueberry muffin,
sometimes you see around the blueberry
a small circle of green.
The blueberry is starting to turn green.
This happens because the
baking soda is interacting
with the acid in the blueberries.
When you see that, it's
usually not a good sign.
It's not the best blueberry
muffin you ever had,
because it means there's
too much baking soda in it.
But that's what happens.
And the same thing happens right now.
You walk outside on the
streets, and you see
all the leaves changing on the trees.
There's other things
that go on there, but one
of the biggest reasons that
these leaves are changing color
is because the pH level in
these leaves is changing.
Preservation.
Acid is involved in two
types of preservations.
On one side we have pickling.
And on the other side
we have fermentation.
If you take this cucumber
here, if you just let it sit,
bad bacteria will grow.
And I know the picture of this
bacteria is kind of ridiculous,
but, somehow I wanted
to make this point.
If you let this cucumber sit,
these bacterias will grow,
it will destroy the cucumber,
or it will destroy you.
In the presence of
acid, bad bacteria dies.
Come on.
In pickling, we simply add
acid in form of vinegar.
In fermentation, acid
is naturally produced,
which will keep the bad
bacteria from growing.
We use this all the time.
Here on this picture we have
pickled purple egg plants.
The one on the right
is just the raw slice.
The one on the left has been pickled.
What's really cool here too is because
of the egg plant's purple skin,
it penetrates that color throughout.
And it looks really beautiful.
Here we have pickled plums.
Sometimes we use the
sous-vide method for pickling.
Pickling under pressure speeds
up the process of pickling.
Here we have fermented mustard greens.
We simply let these
mustard greens ferment
by adding salt, water,
onions, and ginger.
And again, through the fermentation
process, acid is produced.
And it will keep bad
bacteria from growing.
Here we have a foie gras dish
that we serve in the restaurant.
It's a foie gras dish with sunchokes.
I love this dish.
And it's a dish that we serve
during the winter months.
And I love this dish so
much because preservation
allows us here to use ingredients
that are out of season.
On this dish we have
fermented mustard greens.
And they're a little
hard to see, and I think
we could have picked
maybe a better picture,
but I promise you they're there.
We have pickled sunchokes, and we have
a relish of onions and mustard seeds.
I love how preservation is
helping us in this dish.
We're using ingredients
that are out of season.
But in addition, also
preservation is bringing acid
to the dish, which helps balance the
flavor of that the rich and creamy foie
gras.
We could talk about this
an entire lecture and more.
It's a really complex topic--
fermentation preservation.
And I know a week from
today Jody Adams will
give an entire class on fermentation.
Let's get back to our original question.
Where's the acid?
We use many different acids
from all kinds of places.
So let's look into our pantry.
This is a picture of our dry storage.
We have bottled vinegars that we buy
from balsamic vinegars, [INAUDIBLE]
vinegars, sherry vinegars,
red wine vinegars.
We have all kinds of vinegar
powders that we're using.
Malic acid powders, lactic acid
powders, citric acid powders.
We're also making our own vinegar.
We have a vinegar machine, and
then we age the vinegar in barrels.
Making our own vinegar allows us
to be very specific to our dishes.
In our walk-in, we have
all the fresh dairy
that brings us the lactic acid from
creme fresh, yogurt, cream, and milk.
And then of course we
have all the fruits.
Citrus fruits, apples,
pineapples, they give us acid.
We're using a pH meter
at the restaurant.
And we're using it as a measure to give
us more consistency, more accuracy.
We're using it in a way we use a scale,
or in a way we measure temperature.
I want to talk a little bit
about some of the pH levels
that we've learned about.
And I want to start with water.
And remember-- I'm sure
you probably all know this,
but I want to remind you-- that
the lower the number in pH,
the higher the acidity.
So we took our still water-- and this
is the water we serve with our meal--
we took still water, and
we measured it at 7.5.
7 Is neutral, so it's
very close to neutral.
Then we measured our sparkling water.
And our sparkling
water is highly acidic.
And then we even ask ourselves,
is it just the bubbles?
Or when it goes flat,
will the acidity remain?
And it does.
What's cool about here
is that we actually
learn that CO2 is a source of acid.
So we can add CO2 to anything, and
the acidity in that will increase.
But then there's something else.
When you go have dinner, the most simple
question in the beginning of your meal,
do you want still or sparkling water?
This question is not
that simple anymore,
because it changes the experience
of your meal dramatically.
We also looked at the manufactured
foods that we talked earlier.
And we measured those.
They're highly acidic, all of them.
But the most surprising
here was Coca Cola.
Everyone in the world drinks Coca-Cola.
Everyone loves Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola is more acidic
then red wine vinegar.
Just imagine that.
Isn't that crazy?
You eat that with your meal.
It's more acidic than red wine vinegar.
That's unbelievable.
And when you drink Coca-Cola, you
never think of it as being acidic.
And that's because there's so much
sugar to balance all that acid,
it makes it a beverage
that everyone loves.
I talked about this dish earlier.
Our duck dish.
And I told you the sensation of sweet
and sour, and how crucial the sauce is.
The perfect level in
this sauce of pH is 4.6.
So I wanted to see if we take
our cooks, are line cooks,
and we have them make this sauce
over a period of three weeks.
Make it blindly without a
pH meter, just by taste.
And this is what they came in,
in those ranges they came in.
Between 4.3 and 4.9.
It's pretty close, don't you think?
It's really close.
And it's just by taste.
So then I wanted to see, OK.
Let's take our more experienced
cooks, our sous chefs.
And let's have them do the same thing,
and see if they could get it closer.
And thankfully, They did.
But hey, just to be clear, when I make
this sauce-- But so, that's great.
We have pH levels.
And it helps us to
make it more accurate.
And it's a great tool.
But even if that sauce
has the perfect pH level,
it doesn't mean the sauce is delicious.
It can taste totally off.
And I think that is where the
magic of cooking comes in.
We can have all these scientific
tools, but it will never
replace the palate or the talent of
the chefs who are in the kitchen.
Talk about wine.
And this is based on the
people I worked with on this.
You might drink different
wines at Harvard, but--
We can't talk about acid
and not mentioning wine.
Wine is such a big part of our
restaurant, of the dining experience.
And acid in wine is
so, so, so important.
We have the wines on the left
that we pair with our food.
And then we have the wines that
you might drink in college.
And we measured those.
And for our pairing, remember our food
is highly acidic, so what we need,
we need the wine to
be a perfect pairing.
To pair food, you need a wine that is
just as acidic, maybe even more acidic.
And what that does is it lets the
flavor of the wine come through.
It lets the wine be wine, and
not be overpowered by the food.
Although the wines on the right,
that was a surprise to us,
because these wines,
they are highly acidic.
When we drink these
wines, we think of them
as extremely sweet, very high in
alcohol, and very low in acidity.
So we were surprised
to see these numbers.
So again, the pH level is
not-- you can't taste the pH.
In these wines of
lesser quality, there is
acid added artificially to balance
all that sweetness and that sugar.
And that's why when
you drink cheap wine,
you have a way worse hangover than
when you drink good quality wine.
There is a common theme.
Manufactured foods add acid
to make bad food taste better.
The wine industry takes this really
sweet, high alcoholic, bad grape juice,
they add acid, and they can sell it.
If we take that knowledge and we add
it to the best ingredients we have,
and we use it carefully, we can make
food from great to unbelievable.
It affects all levels of food.
On every level, acid changes
and highlights the ingredients.
So I've been talking a lot.
But I want to talk about one more dish.
And this dish I'm really excited about.
This is a dish that we
serve at the restaurant.
We've been serving it for a long time.
It's a dish that a lot of people
talk about, and people really love.
It's a dish of carrot tartare.
This dish is inspired by a
classic New York steak tartare.
And we worked on this idea for a while.
This is what we came up with.
Also, I think it's what
we talked about earlier,
the intersection between
great ingredients
and the history of New York.
I think it's demonstrated
in this dish really well.
We have these amazing carrots
from upstate New York,
from the Hudson Valley.
We get it from a farm, his
name is Alex [INAUDIBLE].
This guy's been growing
carrots for the last 40 years.
He grows about 40
different types of carrots.
These are the best carrots
I have ever tasted.
We wanted to make them
the star of this dish.
And the way we serve it, we bring out
this meat grinder into the dining room,
and we clamp it on to the table.
At this point the guests don't
really know what to expect.
They expect to be meat.
But then we come out with
these amazing carrots.
And in this dish we
demonstrate all three things
that we talked about today.
In this dish, acid affects
the flavor in food.
In this dish, acid affects
the structure in the food.
And also, we're using
acid to preserve food.
So the cook comes out and grinds these
carrots table side into that board.
And on that pallet of ingredients, we
ask our guests to be their own chefs,
and add these ingredients to
their liking, and mix it together.
We have a marinated egg yolk--
what we talked about earlier.
We have pickled mustard seeds.
We have compressed apples.
We have a mustard of apple.
And we have a carrot vinaigrette.
And now, in your bag, there's a
jar with this dish already mixed.
We also have a little
bag of some rye crackers.
You can dip them in.
I would have loved to bring like,
300 meat grinders and make that dish
for you, but I couldn't.
So this is already mixed.
And please taste it.
Acid is so important in this dish.
You can taste it.
And acid in a way, it's such
a simple thing, adding acid.
But then also acid does so many
complicated things that we didn't know,
and we simply took for granted.
There is one more thing
in that bag for you.
And everyone, anyone who leaves
a restaurant at Eleven Madison
leaves with a jar of granola.
The granola has nothing to do with acid.
But we're also in the
hospitality business.
And we just wanted you to
have a delicious breakfast.
Thank you guys.
