Cooking as a social phenomenon
The new headquarters of the Alícia Foundation, designed by Lluís Clotet and Ignacio Paricio, was opened in October 2007. Situated in the hills of Sant Benet de Bages not far from Barcelona, the complex gives additional meaning (and room) to food research pioneered by Ferran Adrià. The Alícia Foundation (an acronym for Alimentación e Ciencia, “food and science”) is conceived as a research centre for the technological innovation and diffusion of Catalonia’s gastronomic heritage, meaning everything related to food processes, health and gastronomy, from a social and cultural standpoint, using a scientific approach and methods. The foundation was set up by the Manresa Savings Bank and the Catalan Regional Government to focus “on technological innovation in kitchen science and the dissemination of agro-nourishment and gastronomic heritage”. With its experimental kitchens, educational gardens and research laboratories open to the public, the Alícia Foundation represents a further evolution of the elBullitaller experimental science department (founded in 1997), the original nucleus set up by Adrià to provide a theoretical foundation for the experiments in contemporary food patterns empirically created in the kitchens of his elBulli restaurant.

Food, science and society: gastronomic alliances
The divulgation involves Adrià from different points of view (industrial, institutional, media). It rests on the certainty that only the transfer of gastronomic scientific discoveries to the food industry and to people’s homes can bring about a true renewal of contemporary food culture as “art for the palate”. On the one hand, Alícia institutionalises the dialogue with science. On the other, it seeks a distinctive relationship with the food industry, in order to widen the distribution radius of gastronomic renewal. The overall project is even more ambitious, with Alícia as one element in the broader Futural project, instigated by the Spanish food industry to improve product quality and the competitiveness of the sector. This macro-project was set in motion with 35 million euros, in response to the fact that the whole sector allocates just 1 per cent of its turnover to research and development. Futural will investigate the application of new technologies on manufacturing processes; it will study the use of technology such as the electric pulse, the low intensity scanner, light waves, high pressure treatments, nanotechnology and active packaging, with the aim of launching new products with a longer and better shelf-life. In the light of these introductory steps, the Alícia Foundation clearly fits into the framework of Adrià’s boosted scientific research system. We can imagine that this is only the start of widening perceptions, given that since the creation of texturas in 1997, one of the objectives of the elBulli creative laboratory has been to increase the range of possible aggregations of food, to the extent of spreading the “texturas” style in cooking. These are sparked by transformation processes like Spherification, jellification, emulsification, lyophilisation, reduction and many others. Resulting from strict selection and experimentation, these have already paved the way for a whole series of foams, airs, clouds, hot gelatines, vegetal and fruit caviars, round ravioli, endless spaghetti lengths and so on. And now, thanks also to the commitment of Albert Adrià and the collaboration with Solé Graells, it is possible to produce and market a whole new generation of ingredients: densifiers, hydrocolloids (indispensable to the practices of reducing foods to the consistency of minute spheres), jellifiers (such as Gellan, derived from the bacterium Sphingomonas elodea or the range of carrageens or the Agar of hot gelatines) and again the emulsifiers based on lecithin (used in creating, for example, the momentous Parmesan iced air). Thanks to them, therefore, all the new creations in this cutting-edge cuisine will be able to join our daily vocabulary.

Agro-food imagery and food perspectives
One of the Alícia Foundation’s first moves was the publication of a Culinary Scientific Lexicon (subtitled: “The keys to understanding modern cooking”), edited by Ferran and Albert Adrià, with Alícia and elBullitaller. This common project unites apparent opposites: experimentalism and scientific rigour, artisanship and industrial production. Alicia’s research department can count on a regular team that is available for collaboration with anybody in the food production sector wishing to conduct advanced research and benefit from the engineering of new discoveries. Current investigation tends to broaden the possibilities developed by Adrià’s Texturas, with particular regard to conservation possibilities. The use of particular additives is examined, such as polyols, for their anti-freeze characteristics (making it possible to lower temperatures below zero without ice forming). Tests are also being carried out on the use of radio frequencies for defrosting and applications for liquid nitrogen. A separate study concerns the instruments and apparatuses sector. This department conducts surveys on possibilities offered by machinery not yet widely used on a domestic level, but which points to an evolution of future electrical appliances. In this field, a special collaboration has been started with International Cooking Concepts (ICC), a business that deals with the development and divulgation of the most advanced technologies in restaurants and catering. A spray-drying machine, for example, is used to observe the dehydration process by means of high temperatures, with particular reference to the powdered dairy products and vegetables of Texturas. The Rotaval machine, developed in collaboration with Alícia and El Celler de Can Roca restaurant, permits the distillation of any type of product (liquid or solid) as long as it is humid, which means that it captures the purest aromas, using a vacuum pump. This transformation process allows water to be eliminated from foods at low temperatures, directly by sublimation (i.e. from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state), thus preventing dispersal of volatile elements during dehydration and leaving the taste of food intact. Digitisation of the system allows a precise control of the parameters, so that fruit jams can be created without adding sugar or miscellaneous distillates, thereby avoiding alterations due to cooking or oxidisation. Spheral, an encapsulating machine, could pave the way for commercialisation of the technique that encapsulates flavours in microscopic spheres. Alicia’s programme is thus grafted onto the main body of experimentation developed by Adrià over the years, which was further consolidated in 2003 through collaboration with scientist and gourmet Pere Castells. The resulting work structure is producing a solid corpus of reference literature, which is essential for sharing the knowledge gleaned in all this experimentation. Significantly, in Ferran Adrià’s 23-point Philosophical Synthesis of the El Bulli restaurant, point one states: “Cooking is a language through which all the following properties can be expressed: harmony, creativity, beauty, poetry, complexity, magic, humour, provocation, culture.”