The name of deliciousness and the gastrophysics behind it

We and our colleagues at the Center for Biomembrane Physics have a wide range of interests, competencies, and facilities in the broad field of biophysics, and in the physics and physical chemistry of biological materials. In particular, we are interested in lipids, proteins, and membranes, as well as of the different phenomena related to membranes, including membrane function, the action of drugs, and the effects of various processes on membranes. Moreover, we have available a large arsenal of theoretical, experimental, and simulational methods and instrumentation. Taken together with a keen interest in food and the enjoyment of food, a natural step was to apply all these capacities to study problems related to gastronomy. After all, the empirical world of cooking mostly uses materials of biological origin, the methods used in cooking involve some kind of chemical and physical processing [1-5], and the sensations of food, such as mouth-feel and flavor, are based on mechanisms obeying principles from physics and chemistry.An initial interest in food from the sea, stimulated by the first author’s passion for Japanese cuisine, particularly sushi [6], gradually developed into questions regarding the use of marine macroalgae (seaweeds) [7], and from there to the flavor of certain seaweeds, in particular the taste of deliciousness (umami) [8,9]. The work was greatly stimulated by collaboration with a range of inventive chefs.We provide a brief preliminary report on the likely results to which such an approach can lead, and hence, by example, give an opinion on what gastrophysics could be.The history of flavor owes so much to a discovery made by Kikunae Ikeda, who in 1908 [10] studied the chemical composition of the large brown seaweed, konbu (Saccharina japonica). Konbu is used together with a highly processed fish product, katsuobushi, to produce dashi, the soup broth around which the entire Japanese cuisine revolves. Ikeda found that konbu contains very large amounts of