Molecular gastronomy is the name given to a variety of cooking
techniques that involve methods and equipment borrowed from
chemical laboratories. One of those is cooking “sous vide” (under
vacuum). This isn’t a technique for amateurs, necessarily, but it
is an interesting application of some of the ideas presented
here.
Say, for the sake of discussion, some of the air was removed
from a pressure cooker so that a partial vacuum is created, before
cooking begins. The pressure inside the...