The UB holds the Science & Cooking World Congress Barcelona 2019
From March 4 to 6, the Historical Building will hold the first edition of the Science & Cooking World Congress Barcelona 2019, a meeting framed within the Third Catalan Cooking Congress 2018-2019.
From March 4 to 6, the Historical Building will hold the first edition of the Science & Cooking World Congress Barcelona 2019, a meeting framed within the Third Catalan Cooking Congress 2018-2019.
Àngels Chacón, Minister of Entreprise and Knowledge, attended the opening ceremony, where the rector of the UB highlighted that the University of Barcelona is one of the promoters of gastronomic science studies. Other attendants were Pere Castells, president of the organizing committee; Agustí Colom, councillor for Occupation, Business and Tourism at the Barcelona City Council, and Professor Màrius Rubiralta, director of the Third Catalan Cooking Congress 2018-2019.
The Science & Cooking World Congress Barcelona 2019 gathers for the first time the main international actors that carried out the conceptualization of cooking and gastronomy as a science over the last twenty-five years, and brought chefs, communication experts, professionals and businesspeople, lecturers and researchers from around the world to the field of knowledge and progress of cuisine.
Among the international distinguished speakers are Hervé This, Harold McGee, Davide Cassi, Dave Weitz and Michael Brenner; the chefs Joan Roca, Nandu Jubany and Ferran Adrià, among others, as well as a numerous representation from Latin America. In short, this is an exceptional opportunity to establish a debate on the main challenges of the new field of knowledge in the intersection between science and cuisine.
The first session, today Monday, March 4, is focused on showing the past, present and future of the science and cuisine through the experience of the course Science & Cooking by Harvard, to explore the influence Harold McGeeʼs book On Food and Cooking had on the culinary knowledge and to take a look at the relation between science and cuisine in Catalonia through different projects.
This session will also commemorate the 50th anniversary of the speech “The physicist in the kitchen”, by the physic from the University of Oxcord Nicholas Kurti at the Real Society of London on March 14, 1969. There will be a tribute to the figure of the one who started the relation between science and cuisine in modern times. This activity will be jointly carried out by Javier Tejada, emeritus professor and physicist of the University of Barcelona, and Charles Spence, lecturer at the University of Oxford.
Tuesday, March 5, is dedicated to the view on science and cuisine from different American and European countries, and will close with the master conference by Professor Davide Cassi, from the University of Parma (Italy), titled “The true story of molecular cuisine”. This session will present two projects led by researchers from the Department of Nutrition, Food Sciences and Gastronomy of the UB, one on computing gastronomy and another on the listing of unprocessed culinary products.
Last, the third and last session of the conference, Wednesday, March 6, will be about roundtables and open debates to treat those questions presented by the organization and others presented by the public and the speakers.
The ceremony for the first edition of the Sferic Awards will take place in this congress. These awards are aimed to distinguish scientifically a culinary technique that contributes to scientific innovation. The Science & Cooking Observatory will also be created.