The International Centre of Molecular and Physical Gastronomy announces the 14th International Contest for Note by Note Cuisine.
The topic will be :
Reduce production costs and time, reduce calories, but mind the flavour !
(extra points willbe given to competitors that will be able to make the dish for the jury in ten minutes during the finals, live or video ; please avoid generalities about note by note, and focus on the dish that you submit to the contest).
Organizers
Roisin Burke (roisin.burke@tudublin.ie), Yolanda Rigault (yolanda.rigault@wanadoo.fr), Hervé This vo Kientza (herve.this@inrae.fr)
Partners :
Société Louis François, https://louisfrancois.com/
Société Kitchen Lab Food, https://www.kitchenlabfood.com/
CRC Press : https://www.routledge.com/Handbook-of-Molecular-Gastronomy-Scientific-Foundations-Educational-Practices-and-Culinary-Applications/Burke-Kelly-Lavelle-ThisvoKientza/p/book/9780367741617
1. Introduction : Synthetic Cooking and Note by Note Cuisine
Synthetic cooking is the culinary technique of using pure compounds to produce foods ("dishes"). It is the basis of the culinary movement known as Note by Note Cuisine.
With synthetic cooking, the cook has to decide on the shape, smell, flavour, consistency, etc. of each part of the dish. Of course, they have to deal with questions of nutrition and toxicology, and synthetic cooking is part of the wider Note by Note Project, which aims to contribute to food security in 2050, when the world's population will doubtless have exceeded ten billion. In particular, the Note by Note Project aims to combat waste - of ingredients, water or energy - while taking care of the environment.
The goal of this 14th contest:
Reduce production costs and time, reduce calories, but mind the flavour
For this new competition, we're inviting competitors (in all three categories: chefs, students, amateurs) to demonstrate how synthetic cooking can reduce production costs as well as calories, compared to equivalent traditional dishes. .
Indeed there are already indications that such reductions are possible:
- for example, for a Note by Note dinner served by the chef Julien Binz, in Ammerschwihr (Alsace), it was evaluated that the production time was divded by two, and the production costs by two and a half, compared to an ordinary dinner in the same restaurant ;
- in the 13th International Contest for Note by Note Cuisine, one competitor showed such reductions for his proposal.
The competitors will have to send one or more recipes giving for each:
- the list of ingredients, with quantities and brand
- the detailed process (times, temperatures, tools needed, processing details)
- the various steps of preparation
- a high quality picture of the finished dish
To enter the competition, participants must register in different categories
(1) Professional chefs: they will be judged on their ability to create a recipe using pure compounds or a mixture of pure compounds and conventional ingredients.
(2) Students
(3) General public.
Looking for the ingredients?
To cook Note by Note, all you need is your kitchen, your kitchen cupboards and your supermarket. There, you'll find pure compounds such as water, sugar, salt, xanthan gum, lecithins and so on.
Some can be extracted. For example, if you acidify milk and extract the curds (mainly casein), you prepare whey. Or, from wheat flour, if you make a dough and remove the starch, you can separate the gluten (which can also be bought from bakers).
There are other cheap ways to source ingredients:
- look for bargains on the Internet through online sales companies
- send an e-mail to the most important suppliers and ask for free samples (small quantities).
Examples of suppliers:
Kitchen Lab Food. Accessible through:
https://kitchennlaboratory.wixsite.com/researchdevelopment/fr/accueil
Louis François (2019). Louis François- Ingrédients alimentaires depuis 1908. Available at: http://www.louisfrancois.com/index_en.html
MSK (2019), Catalogue MSK. [en ligne] Disponible à l'adresse : http://msk-ingredients.com/msk-catalogue-2019/?page=1.
Sosa (2019). Catalogue Sosa. Available at: https://www.sosa.cat/
Texturas (2012). Texturas Albert y Ferran Adria. Available at: http://albertyferranadria.com/eng/texturas.html
To participate
Each dish submitted to the contest must be :
1. described in a .doc file by a recipe (Roman 12) giving .
1.1. ingredients, including quantities
1.2. process
2. photographs.
Candidates must accept that their recipes and photos may be used (with their name) by the competition organizers and partners (see authorization for use at the bottom of this document) for non commercial purposes (communication, promotion of the contest, promotion of note by note cuisine). Any submitted recipe will be an implicit or explicit acceptance of this.
There wil be a preselection by the jury, and six competitors will be invited to the finals. They will be able to show a powerpoint presentation, but for this next context, it was decided that extra points will be given when competitors make really their dish (in the limit of 10 minutes, pllus 5-10 minutes of questions
Evaluation criteria:
Compliance with theme (/10, 4 for costs, 4 for calories, 2 for production time)
Sensory appreciation (/10, with 4 for consistency, 3 for odor, 3 for flavour)
Feasibility, reproducibility (/5)
The use of pure compounds is preferred to the use of fractions.
Of course, the products must not be toxic.
The complexity of flavour will be appreciated: dishes have a shape, a consistency, an odour, a taste, a trigeminal sensation, a temperature...
The dish should provoke visual interest.
Who can enter?
The competition is free and open to all. But there will be different categories:
- professional chefs,
- students,
- amateurs.
How to participate?
To register, simply send an e-mail to icmg@agroparistech.fr with your postal address, telephone number and signed authorization to distribute the competition material.Then, to submit the result, send a file (.doc file) to icmg@agroparistech.fr describing the recipe in detail, together with a powerpoint document (.ppt file) showing the various stages and the final result, with high-resolution 300 dpi photos.
Dates :
- applications before 1 August 2026.
- recipes sent before 15 August 2026.
Evaluation :
Evaluation will take place in two stages
1. pre-selection by a jury
2. evaluation of pre-selected recipes by a jury composed of :
Eric Briffard (Institut Cordon bleu)
Pierre Dominique Cécillon (Toques Blanches Internationales)
Kelly Tea (Louis François Inc)
Jean-Pierre Lepeltier (Toques Blanches Internationales)
Dao Nguyen et Pasquale Altomonte (Kitchen Lab Food)
Yolanda Rigault (biochemist, organizer)
Guillaume Siegler, chef Institut Cordon bleu
Patrick Terrien (Toques Blanches Internationales and Académie Culinaire de France)
Prize giving event:
Physically: Campus Agro Paris Saclay, Palaiseau (France), the first Friday in September 2025 (to be defined later during the year)
On line: with a link that will be given when you apply at icmg@agroparistech.fr
Prizes will be awarded by the partners : Louis François SA, Kitchen Lab Food, Institut Cordon bleu. The best results will be posted on various websites (notably the INRAE-AgroParisTech International Centre of Molecular and Physical Gastronomy website: https://icmpg.hub.inrae.fr/international-activities-of-the-international-centre-of-molecular-gastronomy/synthetic-cooking-note-by-note-cooking ). They will also be presented on posters at exhibitions.
Thanks to our partners
Companies Kitchen Lab Food, CRC Press, Louis François, Toques Blanches International Club, Institut Cordon Bleu, Académie culinaire de France
Diffusion authorization
I, the undersigned .................... residing at ............................. hereby authorize the organizers and partners of the 14th International Contest for Note by Note Cuisin to distribute the recipes and images submitted for participation in the competition.
Done in ………………………….. the …………………………………..
Signature :
Annex
To understand, let's make the distinction
On the one hand, there's molecular gastronomy, which will develop ad infinitum in the silence of scientific laboratories.
And on the other, there are its applications: "molecular cuisine" (which we must hurry to outgrow) and "synthetic cuisine", which will be the next big, sustainable culinary trend!
More about Note by Note Cuisine
In 1988, the scientific discipline known as "molecular and physical gastronomy" was officially created.
It is a scientific activity, carried out by scientists (not cooks), based, like all other scientific disciplines, on experiment and calculation, and which, like all other scientific disciplines, aims to understand phenomena.
In this case, the aim of molecular and physical gastronomy is to investigate the mechanisms of phenomena that occur during the preparation and consumption of dishes (or foods).
Let's be clear: molecular and physical gastronomy is not cooking... even if some people (wrongly!) confuse gastronomy with haute cuisine! We should point out here that the expression "molecular and physical gastronomy" is perfectly suited to designate a scientific activity such as the one described here. Indeed, the word "gastronomy" actually refers to "reasoned knowledge", not fine cuisine. Molecular and physical gastronomy, a scientific activity, is indeed "reasoned knowledge", and it is "molecular", just as molecular biology is, in that it considers the molecular aspects of culinary transformations.
In short, molecular and physical gastronomy is for scientists, and it's a mistake to say that some cooks practice molecular and physical gastronomy; they can only practice "molecular cooking" (an unfortunate expression, but one imposed by the circumstances), or, better still, "molecular cuisine".
What is causing confusion is that, at the same time as we created molecular and physical gastronomy, we also wanted to renovate culinary techniques, and introduced the terminology "molecular cooking" to designate this new, renovated cuisine.
The definition of "molecular cooking" is:
"The production of food (cooking, that is) using "new" tools, ingredients and methods".
In this definition, the term "new" more or less refers to everything that wasn't in the kitchens of French chefs in 1980. For example: the siphon (to make mousses), sodium alginate (to make liquid-core pearls, vegetable spaghetti, etc.) and other gelling agents (agar-agar, carrageenans, etc.), liquid nitrogen (to make liquid-core pearls, vegetable spaghetti, etc.), and so on. ), liquid nitrogen (for the production of sorbets and many other preparations), the rotary evaporator, and, more generally, all the laboratory equipment that can be of technical use; an example of a new method, finally, the preparation of "chocolat chantilly", beaumés, gibbs, nollet, vauquelins, etc. (see Cours de gastronomie moléculaire n°1 : Science, technologie, technique (culinaires) : quelles relations ?, Ed Quae/Belin).
Of course, all these tools, ingredients and methods are not new in the strict sense of the term (many "new" gelling agents are centuries old, in Asia, and have been used by the food industry for a long time, while many tools are traditional in chemistry).
The next trend : note by note cuisine
The next, far more exciting proposal is that of NOTE BY NOTE CUISINE.
It was born in 1994 (published in the journal Scientific American) when one of us (H. This) was testing the introduction of defined compounds into foods: paraethylphenol in wines or whiskies, 1-octene-3-ol in dishes, limonene, tartaric acid, etc. The initial proposal was to improve foods... but naturally, as an extension of the previous practice, we introduced the concept of "note by note", the idea of composing foods entirely from compounds was naturally introduced.
In other words, synthetic cooking (and note-to-note cuisine) no longer uses traditional mixtures of food compounds (meat, fish, fruit, vegetables), but only compounds... just as electroacoustic music does not use trumpets, violins, etc., but only pure sound waves that are combined.
Using pure compounds, the chef must therefore :
- design the shapes of the elements making up the dish
- design their colours
- design their flavours
- conceive their odours (ante and retronasal)
- design the trigeminal action
- design consistencies
- design temperatures
- nutritional constitution
- etc.
To date, the feasibility of this new cuisine has been fully demonstrated (see the previous contests, for example).
