Snail porridge, salmon with liquorice and bacon and egg ice cream…Make you want to gag and run to the toilet in disgust? Well, it shouldn’t, seeing as it’s part of the menu at The Fat Duck, a restaurant in the United Kingdom that was recently voted the best restaurant in the world!

This type of menu forms part of a new wave in cooking known as molecular gastronomy – in short it refers to chefs who decided to convert their kitchens into science labs because, as we all know – a bit of science applied to anything is a recipe for success.

Heston Blumenthal is the Frankenstein behind these recipes. He spends most of his time in his lab across the road from the Fat Duck surrounded by Bunsen cookers, jars filled with Benzaldehyde and test tubes. He concocts the perfect recipes by breaking down food into their chemical components and then re-combining foods that have the same chemical make-up.

This weird logic (or should I say, total logic) works to produce combinations that make you go “Hmmmm” even though you probably scrunched your nose in disgust before taking a bite!