By Alissa Aron

I felt a little devious as I approached the warehouse door subtly marked with a cryptic “IV."

But I had been invited to this nearly unmarked warehouse in the Seattle suburbs, the endpoint of my determined quest to see the inner workings of Nathan Myhrvold’s kitchen laboratory. Myhrvold, once the Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft, left the company to found Intellectual Ventures (IV), an invention company with the ultimate goal of advancing society.

Projects at IV have included devising methods to weaken hurricanes and cure malaria, by constructing a barrage of lasers around villages that would vaporize any mosquito who dared enter.

But I first learned of Myhrvold in a New York Times article describing his latest endeavor: a 1,500 page cookbook designed to teach professional chefs the basic science underlying any conceivable dish.

To write the book, Myhrvold has set up a kitchen laboratory equipped with every imaginable culinary gadget, including both those intended for both in and out of the kitchen. Ever since reading the article, I have attempted to penetrate the bastion that is IV, even contacting the chefs at the Seattle restaurant where Myhrvold (who is a classically trained chef in addition to a scientist boasting two masters degrees, a Ph.D. and a postdoctoral fellowship under Stephen Hawking) sometimes works the line.

Finally, while home in Seattle over break, I was able to reach Chris Young, Myhrvold’s trusty sidekick who heads the book project after he left his biochemistry graduate studies to work as a researcher for chef Heston Blumenthal at his famed restaurant, The Fat Duck.

Young agreed to show me around the 27,000 foot laboratory that housed the kitchen wonderland. Needless to say, I expected a little more than a 4-by-5-inch “IV” on the door of the place.

Walking inside, my skepticism evaporated as I was greeted by the site of spectrophotometers and hurricane-modeling fish tanks. Young introduced Maxime Bilet, the project’s head chef, who had also come over from The Fat Duck.

The photography studio was the first stop on the tour, where Young estimates that the team’s professional photographer has shot over 100,000 images for the book so far. He then led me past a well-secured mosquito dwelling and a laser test zone to the kitchen.

Chefs were easily recognizable in striped aprons, but beyond that, the room’s identity was questionable. Enormous rotary evaporators were set up for use as stills, as the vacuum suction on the instrument allows liquids to boil at room temperature.

This set-up allows particular flavors from herbs, flowers, or any fragrant material to be distilled and isolated without the heat that would cause their odors to be altered.

A large collection of homogenizers capable of dividing fat globules to diameters of only a few microns (the tongue can detect down to about seven microns) make super-smooth sauces and soft-serve ice cream base.

If those aren’t enough to get the job done, there is always the sonicator, which uses ultrasound to blend the mixture at the molecular level.

Freeze driers hold whole heads of romaine, making a healthy snack with that ever-satisfying crunch, and a 100-ton hydraulic press has been used to smash dried beef so the individual muscle fibrils unravel like Twizzlers.

An important area of the lab’s research involves alternative cooking techniques. Most famously utilized in the emerging technique of sous-vide, where foods are vacuum-packed and submerged in water, then cooked below boiling for extended periods of time in order to maintain the foods’ integrity, Young and Myhrvold are looking to even more exotic methods.

They make intensely flavored stocks using an autoclave – a device that subjects its contents (usually scientific or medical equipment and waste) to high-pressure steam, typically to render them sterile, and experiment with ovens that utilize the properties of pressurized gas to ensure uniform, accurate heating of foods.

If the team needs a piece of equipment that it doesn’t have on hand – or that doesn’t yet exist – they can turn to the on-site machine shop, complete with a 3D printer (great for making chocolate molds), an insanely powerful water knife, which Young claims can cut through a six-inch thick block of steel like warm butter, and numerous other computer and manually operated machining tools that can make just about anything from just about any material.

And for those items they can’t make, there’s always the warehouse where their bounty of used scientific equipment waits to be refurbished or put to an entirely new use. IV’s resources, both financial and intellectual, seem to be near-limitless, which helps to explain how the book project, originally intended to be a comprehensive, but relatively short, explanation of sous-vide, has expanded into an unparalleled, authoritative work on the science of cuisine. Despite the project’s evolution, Young remains optimistic that the three-volume book will be released in the Fall of 2010.

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