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Chemist Behind UK's Most Innovative Chef to Cook up a Storm in Coventry

Dr Peter Barham, a research chemist who has applied his chemical knowledge to assist one of the UK's most innovative chefs, is to explore the science of cooking in a free lecture and cooking demonstration, of how taste does (and doesn't!) work at the University of Warwick on Thursday the 17th of February at 4pm in the University's Physics Lecture Theatre.

He will also show some videos of the work he has done with Guardian food writer and chef Heston Blumenthal who has been acclaimed for his experiments with flavour and chemistry of cooking at The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire. The event is one of a series of Royal Society of Chemistry lectures being run by the University of Warwick's Department of Chemistry this year.

Thanks to his collaboration with Dr Barham of Bristol University, chef Heston Blumenthal now uses a wide range of 'scientific' equipment in his kitchen - all purchased from a laboratory, rather than a kitchen supplier. Blumenthal's kitchen at The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, includes temperature-controlled water baths to cook fish and some meats; a vacuum still to extract flavours from herbs and stocks before they are lost to the environment; and plenty of temperature probes.

'My collaboration with Heston is like that with any other scientist', said Barham 'We talk often and usually the conversation quickly veers away from the original objective but always new ideas are sparked off.'

Note for editors: The Physics Lecture Theatre on the Science Concourse, located in building at the North end of the footbridge crossing Library Road. Building 11 on the map found here http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/visiting/maps/central/

For further information please contact:

Peter Dunn, Press and Media Relations Manager
University of Warwick 07767 655860
02476 523708 p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk