Whether you can afford it or not, the world of molecular gastronomy, the convergence of art, science, and food appears to be with us for a while as restaurants like Alinea and elBulli take honors as some of the best restaurants in the world. This new book, Cooking Science: Condensed Matter by Vicenc Altaio, Ferran Adria, and Josep Perello, is the physical catalog of a show presented in part by Harvard by the same name that sought to view gastronomy and nutrition through the eyes of scientists.

Cooking science invites us to look at cooking, gastronomy and nutrition through the scientist’s eyes and see them as a truly cultural activity which brings a wealth of knowledge into play. Challenging the predominance of visual culture, our eating habits and the pleasure of food privilege the senses of taste, touch, smell and even hearing. Perception and landscape define our cooking, but cooking also has a component of reflection and innovation based on scientific and technological research. [...] This volume constitutes a unique document of this task. The book’s QR codes link the paper media with the digital media, augmenting the reality and giving further information.

You can see quite a few more pages from the book here. The question at the heart of this all, I suppose, is can food be regarded as true art? Or can science be art? Gah my eyes just crossed. (via we make money not art)