One reason why the food you eat at restaurants today is so different from the food your grandparents ate when they went out is because great chefs have created new techniques and dishes that have contributed to the advancement of global cuisine.

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Unfortunately many of these advances have now been corrupted to the level where they are caricatures of what their inventors originally intended. Here is a list of some things that I am fed up of.

Heston Blumenthal pioneered the use of liquid nitrogen in cooking. His The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray was the first restaurant to use techniques based on liquid nitrogen.

Ferran Adria at El Bulli took Blumenthal’s work and created the siphon which transformed many cooking techniques. Neither man liked the term molecular gastronomy which was invented by Herve This who wrote an influential book of that name. But the techniques they created, no matter what you called them, revolutionised restaurant kitchens.

Even then, there was a danger that their work was being caricatured by less talented chefs who bought the equipment Blumenthal and Adria had popularised but did not understand the philosophy behind the cooking.

Years ago I asked Adria if he was worried that he would be remembered as the man who taught talentless chefs how to make foams. These are airy things that taste a little of the flavours they are communicating while giving your mouth a bubble bath. They became the signature of mindless molecular madness.

Adria laughed but sadly, in the........

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