Wherefore foams?

September 27, 2008 8:53 PM

What is the point of foams in modern cooking? Is it for taste, or presentation, or just to be innovative?
posted by smackfu to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

all three for a good chef; just the latter for a bad or inexperienced one.
posted by lia at 9:16 PM on September 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I can think of two particular legitimate uses of foam: cappuccino, and meringue.

And, I guess, there's also souffle.
posted by Class Goat at 9:29 PM on September 27, 2008

Taste, texture and innovation. I once had grilled asparagus with a salted milk foam - it was incredible and really changed the taste of the asparagus when eaten together.
posted by meerkatty at 9:41 PM on September 27, 2008

Belgian waffles and good chocolate mousse have foams at their core.
posted by mmascolino at 10:18 PM on September 27, 2008

There are various cakes and breads (like Belgian waffles, as mmascolino says) which are leavened only by foam. Pound cakes too. I suppose you could flip through a cookbook looking for instances of beaten eggwhite.

Foams and emulsions and colloids are so widely used in cooking I don't think there's an answer to "what is it for" unless you can be more specific about what dishes you're thinking of.
posted by hattifattener at 10:49 PM on September 27, 2008

Foams are a pain to work with unless you have the rights tools and techniques. For the molecular gastronomic crowd, having a bunch of foams indicates that you possess both the toys and the theory. Plus MGs really enjoy pairing flavors with dissonant textures and pushing the limits of what constitutes cuisine. But yeah it's pretty much a gimmick. Give me some steak frites over beef foam with potato pearls and gravy sorbet any day.
posted by Telf at 10:56 PM on September 27, 2008

Don't forget mouth feel, which American cuisine (traditional otherwise) is almost completely bereft of.
posted by Ookseer at 11:33 PM on September 27, 2008

There's a fine line between a gimmick and innovation. I've actually found it interesting to read Ideas in Food, where two chefs discuss a lot of the ideas behind doing "different" things with food.
posted by O9scar at 12:25 AM on September 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Foams and emulsions and colloids are so widely used in cooking I don't think there's an answer to "what is it for" unless you can be more specific about what dishes you're thinking of.

The OP is talking about fancy molecular gastronomy foams, like this. She doesn't just mean foam in general.

I think that foam is just the cool new thing to use, frankly. Some people are interested in playing with a neat new technique, and others are just hopping on the trendwagon. I imagine that foam will stop showing up in absolutely everything in a few years, but will still have a place in cooking. Kind of like how America was obsessed with putting everything in gelatin for a while.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:25 AM on September 28, 2008

I think Ookseer is right. It's all about the texture. People really underestimate how much it can affect their enjoyment of a dish that otherwise tastes fantastic.
posted by sunshinesky at 11:19 AM on September 28, 2008