Food Product Design: Culinary Connection - January 2001 - Practicing Culinology

January 2001

By Jeffrey Cousminer

Definition mission
The term culinology was coined by Winston Riley, former president and a founder of the Research Chefs Association (RCA), to describe and formalize the fusion of two disciplines — culinary art and food technology. This was not an arbitrary or frivolous notion on Chef Riley’s part. Instead, it recognized the birth and evolution of a critical new expertise in the food industry — the ability to efficiently and economically manufacture restaurant-quality "convenience foods" that actually look and taste like food served in a restaurant.

Foods of this kind were first developed for retail outlets such as the local supermarket. But with the explosion in the number of fast-food restaurants, all competing for a bigger share of the dine-out dollar, culinology now includes the expertise necessary to produce restaurant-quality foods for restaurants as well as for retail establishments.

Like most chefs who have gotten into the research end of the business, I started my career in restaurants, doing an assortment of jobs over the years — waiting tables, tending bar and developing menus — and holding positions ranging from prep cook and garde-manger to catering manager. I reached the pinnacle of my restaurant career early in 1983, when I was hired to open the kitchen at The Frog and The Peach restaurant in New Brunswick, NJ (still one of the top five restaurants in the state, even years after my departure). That was my last restaurant job. I heard the siren call of culinology, and couldn’t resist the temptation to answer it — not that I had any idea of what I was getting myself into.

Tale of two callings
I first became involved in the culinology phenomenon back in 1984, when Charlie Cante, Ph.D., director of the meals and packaged foods division at General Foods, hired me as the company’s first "technicoculinary specialist." The term he created was rather awkward to pronounce, but described pretty well what he wanted — a chef/food technologist. At first it was difficult living up to the job description — there wasn’t one. It was also difficult to fit in, since I was regarded as a half-breed; not really a chef and not really a food scientist. In fact, for a long time I was not a permanent member of any group in the Meals division. Instead, I turned into a product-development "mercenary." Project leaders would let me stay just long enough to solve the culinary/technical problem that had stumped their usual players, then I would be whisked away to some other manager, some other group and some other project to ply my trade. Believe me, I became extremely frustrated. After all, we chefs are not used to seeing others get all of the applause for our hard work — especially marketing people.

However, driven to succeed, eventually I became a project leader myself. I helped commercialize over 300 products spanning nearly two dozen different product categories. These included novel products; line extensions and base brand improvements; shelf-stable, retorted meals; frozen and refrigerated meals; dry mixes; low pH hot-fills; frozen microwaveable finger foods; and new products/line extensions for the Birds Eye, Stove Top, Shake ‘N Bake, Oscar Mayer, Minute Rice, Ronzoni and Good Seasons brands.

This development work required making use of everything I had ever been taught about food processing equipment and methodologies, food-borne toxicants, allergens, spoilage organisms, flavor enhancement, texture modification, film-forming agents, commercial meat processing, modified atmosphere packaging, freeze/thaw stability, retort processing, consumer testing, dry blending, organoleptic analysis, least-cost formulation, regulatory issues and ingredient labeling. It wasn’t textbook theory anymore — tens of thousands of people were actually going to eat this stuff. It had to be safe, it had to be affordable, it had to be "convenient" and it had to taste good.

Next, I became director of product development for Horizon Foods, a Massachusetts manufacturer of microwaveable frozen snack food products. One of the challenges presented to me was making a microwaveable frozen "french fry," made out of extruded dough, taste like a McDonald’s fry. Yeah, right! What else was on this agenda, turning lead into gold? How in the world do you begin?

The first step is very "low tech" — you taste. Compare the flavor, texture, appearance and aroma of your technological marvel against the "real McCoy." List the differences, and objectively rate how similar or dissimilar your product is to the target. Then take out your alchemist’s tools and begin concocting.
So what’s all this got to do with culinology? Just this: Those pseudo french fries were created by an engineer who was playing around with a twin-screw extruder. He came up with a process (which he patented, no less) yielding a product that could be shaped and cooked like a french fry, then frozen and re-heated in a microwave oven, while still maintaining the texture of a freshly fried McDonald’s fry. Just one problem — it bore no resemblance to a french fry of any kind, least of all the gold standard. Yes, it maintained a certain amount of crispness in the microwave, but it looked like a cigarette butt, it was greasy and it tasted like fried bread.

The inventor had fallen into a trap; he presumed that you could divorce the product from the process. In fact, they are not, and can never be, independent of one another, at least not in the business of food manufacturing. It’s wonderful to invent a better mouse trap, but if it doesn’t catch mice, or if it doesn’t even look like it’ll catch mice, you’ll be out of business faster there you can say "eek!"

Ultimately, after six months of experimenting and making product and process modifications from both a culinary and a technical standpoint, I made the product more natural-looking by cutting the pieces longer and thinner out of the extruder. I reduced the oiliness by coating them in a film-forming starch and frying them in a solid shortening instead of a liquid oil. I even made them taste vaguely potato-like, thanks to my friendly neighborhood flavor company. But no matter, after one bite, nobody would ever mistake these for french fries. Eventually, I scrapped the process entirely, and invented a way (which I patented, no less) of stabilizing the texture of real shoestring potatoes so that they came out of the microwave looking, tasting, smelling and crunching like the McDonald’s target.

And that’s the story of how one culinologist evolved. But what about the rest of the discipline?

Organizing the labor
The RCA was created by folks who consider themselves culinologists, either by training or by job description. The association is dedicated to the care and feeding, growth, development and promotion of culinology and those who practice its unique blend of art and science. We profiled our membership and came up with a set of descriptors for a research chef/culinologist, and established the Certified Research Chef™ program.

Tom Pearson, Ph.D., professor and director of graduate programs in the restaurant, hotel, institutional and tourism management department of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, graciously volunteered to undertake the study. His results were interesting, and not surprisingly, not unequivocal. It seems there is no single "typical" set of descriptors for a prototypical research chef/culinologist. Rather, there are two.

Pearson’s study found that our members exhibited 46 "knowledge competencies," 38 "skill and ability competencies" and 23 "behavior competencies." The most statistically significant competencies, in order of mean response, were:

• A sense of taste.
  
• A "passion" about food.
  
• Ability to work with customers.
  
• Knowledge of flavors.
  
• Knowledge of recipe development.
  
• Ability to work as part of a product- development team.
  
• Knowledge of food sanitation.
  
• Ability to distinguish levels of quality in food products.
  
• General communication skills.
  
• Self-confidence and a positive attitude.
  
• Being enthusiastic.
  
• Ability to make decisions.
  
• Action-oriented/willing to accept responsibility/organized/intellectually curious/proactive.
  
• Knowledge of culinary fundamentals/production systems.
  
• Creativity.
  
• Knowledge of functional ingredients.
  
• Dedication to one’s profession.
  
• Ability to see the "big picture."
  
• Understanding of complete product development process — benchtop through commercial production.
• Management skills: personnel development, ability to prioritize, ability to delegate.
• Knowledge of food trends.
• Knowledge of foodservice operations.
• Knowledge of food trends —past/present/future.
• Knowledge of ethnic/regional cuisines — preparation/spicing/ presentation.
• Skilled in basic computer systems.
  Knowing these competencies, how then did we develop our certification qualifications? By considering the following factors:
• Culinary education or training at establishments such as the Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, NY; Johnson and Wales University, Providence, RI; and Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, LA.
• Culinary and foodservice experience gained from working "in the trenches" — i.e., hotel and restaurant kitchens.
• Scientific and technical education in the food science, food management, food processing and food marketing areas, obtained from both formal instruction and "on the job" training.
• Scientific and technical expertise gained by working for food manufacturers, ingredient suppliers or multi-unit chain operators.
• Membership in the RCA (of course).
  Information on certification program requirements and a downloadable application is available at the official RCA website, www.researchchef.org. For additional information, Nina Price, RCA certification committee chair, can be reached at nina_price@mindspring.com.
  

Mission possible
All of this may seem heavily skewed towards the culinary half of the word "culinology," and it is. That’s because research chefs are a comparatively recent phenomenon in the industry, and we are still struggling mightily for a foothold. Of the more than 29,000 or so readers of Food Product Design, I would guess that less than 500 are chefs. Food scientists, technologists and engineers, etc., already have a recognized place in the product-development hierarchy, not to mention a massive voice and powerful lobby in the Institute of Food Technologists. Research chefs need to achieve that same level of credibility. Without a blueprint to follow and a standard to strive for, however, many of us have had to struggle alone. Not anymore.

With the newly created discipline of culinology, and the growing recognition of the RCA, we are finding our voice, formalizing our purpose and setting the course for those who will follow us. In the course of evolution, successful life-forms don’t just survive, they go on to reproduce themselves for generations. We who not only survived, but prospered from the early challenges of learning and practicing our craft in the often harsh environment of the "corporate primordium," now have an obligation to light the way for the next generation.

By the way, Culinology™ is also the official name of the RCA newsletter. Just thought you’d like to know.

Jeffrey Cousminer, president emeritus of the RCA, currently holds the position of laboratory manager, savory flavor division, at Firmenich, Inc., Princeton, NJ. With an A.O.S. (Associate’s in Occupational Studies) degree from the Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, NY; a B.S. in biology and nutrition from the University of New Haven, New Haven, CT; and an M.S. in food science from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, Cousminer has over 25 years of experience in the restaurant and food-manufacturing sectors of the food industry.

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