We should start.

So thank you all for coming.

So this is, remarkably enough, week 11 of this lecture series.

And we're very happy this week to have Daniel Humm from Eleven Madison Park.

Who will get to speak in a minute.

And he will give a lecture called Where is the Acid?

But before he does that, you have to put up with me.

So we have a fun game here in Science and Cooking.

We have a fun game in Science and Cooking.

We play this sometimes.

It's a parlor game.

We haven't marketed it yet.

No one to my knowledge has done it.

It's called Guess the Food.

So would anyone like to guess the food?

Yes.

What?

AUDIENCE: Peanut butter.

MICHAEL: Peanut butter.

Any other guesses?

Yes, in the back?

AUDIENCE: Chocolate.

MICHAEL: Chocolate.

Yes?

AUDIENCE: Bone marrow.

MICHAEL: Bone marrow.

Actually bone marrow is the closest.

This is beef.

OK.

So guess the food.

Here's another one.

It's a good game, actually.

Does anybody-- yes.

AUDIENCE: Olive oil.

MICHAEL: Say again?

AUDIENCE: Vegetable oil.

MICHAEL: Vegetable oil.

That's very good.

It's olive oil.

OK.

Very good.

So I mean, of course the way you play the game of Guess

the Food is that you all know that there are major molecules of food.

There are fats.

There are carbohydrates.

There are proteins.

There's water, which is not listed on the food label.

And if you look at those and you look at the percentages of the various things,

you can sort of guess the food.

So you guessed the vegetable oil instead of olive oil because it was all fats.

So what do you think it is?

The question I want to raise is what else is important for food?

That is, what else is important in a recipe other than this?

I mean, look, if you have a jar of water, right?

The number of molecules per liter in that jar of water is enormous.

More than 10 to the 23.

There's about 10 to 25 molecules of water that's in a liter of water.

It's a huge number.

But it turns out that-- and this is the idea

I want to leave you with before I turn this over Daniel--

is that oftentimes there are ingredients in a recipe which

are very, very low concentrations, but yet are extremely important for taste.

And just to demonstrate this, here is a typical recipe for lemonade.

And the question is, what makes it taste like lemonade?

Yes.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHAEL: The acid.

Very good.

That was in the title of the lectures.

And where is the acid?

The acid is in the lemons.

OK.

Very good.

So in fact, the acid that's in the lemons is called citric acid.

Here is a picture of it.

And the citric acid is this complicated formula, this chemical formula.

And the main point of it is that acid is something that

more easily loses protons to water.

So an acid releases protons, which are H pluses, which go into water.

So even water, there are protons that are in water--

I mean in the form of hydronium ions.

And the concentration of them is one part in 10 to the seven

of the moles per liter, which is more than 1 10 millionth.

It's actually more than that.

It's like, 1 over 550 millionth of the molecules that are in water

are these protons.

But yet they are critically important for taste.

This is what I want to tell you, that even though there's so few of them,

they are critically important for taste.

And when you see Chef Daniel do magical things with acids, then in fact,

he's adding so few protons that if all of you in this room

were water molecules, there wouldn't be one of you is a proton in the dish

that he makes.

They're just so few.

But yet they're critically important for taste.

And you can control them by playing with things that Chef Daniel will play with.

And I was going to turn it over to Chef Daniel.

[APPLAUSE]

DANIEL HUMM: Wow.

Thank you, Michael.

How are you guys?

AUDIENCE: Good.

DANIEL HUMM: Hey, thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for having me here.

It means a lot.

It's a great honor to be part of this program.

And I'm excited to talk a little bit about myself, my story,

the story of Eleven Madison Park.

And a few things that I've learned along the way in the kitchen.

But before I start I have a confession to make.

Me, I never finished high school.

In fact, I hated going to school.

I hated going to classes and studying things

I knew I probably never going to use.

When I was 14 I left school to be a cook.

Obviously, that was not a very popular decision with my parents.

But it's been the best thing I ever done.

The things that the path of cooking has opened me to-- it's been unbelievable.

The people I've met along the way.

I've traveled the world, learned about different foods and different cultures.

I learned languages.

The opportunities just have been unbelievable.

Eight years ago I came to this country with two suitcases mostly full

of chef clothes, cookbooks, some knives.

I had a couple hundred dollars.

I did not speak English.

Now I'm here speaking in front of you at Harvard.

That's insane.

[APPLAUSE]

DANIEL HUMM: This is one of the best schools in the world, maybe the best

school in the world.

This is the American dream.

When they first asked me to speak here, I

wasn't sure if I'm the right candidate because I'm not a public speaker.

This is totally out of my comfort zone.

I'm nervous standing up here.

I'm a cook.

The place where I feel comfortable is the kitchen.

But as I thought a little bit more about the opportunity,

I knew that there are definitely things I have to share.

It's amazing how food has changed over the past few years.

Now everyone in the world wants to know about food, chefs, and restaurants.

When I started 25 years ago, there was no food and science

program at Harvard, or at any school.

There was no Food Network.

There weren't all of these TV shows, all these magazines.

For sure, there were no celebrity chefs.

Back then it was just about the craft of cooking.

I fell in love with it because I love the energy in the kitchen.

I love to work with fresh ingredients.

I love to work with my hands, create something with my hands.

Cooking is very tangible.

Something my dad always used to say, he said,

it doesn't matter when you're passionate about something how big or small it is.

The only thing that matters is how much effort

you're willing to put towards that.

And that's what's cooking has been for me.

And that is what Eleven Madison Park represents today.

I have this clicker here in my hand, been holding it really awkwardly.

I've never used one of those.

So I just gonna give it to Mike.

To put something together like this, or to do anything great,

it always takes a team.

And I want to say thank you to a few people

that help have helped a lot with this.

I want to say thank you to Mike Pyers.

I want to say thank you to Connie Chung.

Both of them are chefs at our restaurant,

and are in charge of all the research and development.

I want to say thank you to Aaron Ginsberg, who is

our director for strategic development.

And he has spent hours with me practicing this, literally hours.

I wanna say thank you to [? Ali ?] [? Busari ?] who is a friend

and the scientist who helped so much with this,

and made sure we have all the facts right.

I also want to say thank you to my business partner, Will Guidara,

and my best friend.

I want to say thank you to a few things.

On one side, I want to say thank you to create the culture of hospitality

and service that has set new standards in our industry,

because we can talk about food and work our time in the kitchen,

but if the hospitality and the service sucks, it all doesn't matter.

So thank you for that.

In addition, I want to say thank you for supporting me, teaching me, pushing me

to do things I never thought I could.

I also want to say thank you to my girlfriend, Cara,

and her mom, who are both here today.

Because we can have all the support professionally and at work,

but you also need the support at home.

So please give a hand of applause to all of them.

[APPLAUSE]

So let me give you a little context about the restaurant.

Eleven Madison Park is in the heart of Manhattan.

It's on Madison Avenue and 24th Street.

It's in a beautiful art deco building.

The building is occupying an entire city block.

In fact, the building was supposed to become

the tallest building in the world, when it was built in 1928.

But due to the Great Depression, the build was halted.

But what we ended up with is this incredible dining room.

30-foot tall ceilings, huge windows overlooking

Madison Square Park, one of the most beautiful parks in New York.

You even can see the Flatiron Building.

Imagine this dining room was supposed to be the lobby of the tallest

building in the world.

There is no other restaurant with a better view than ours.

It's such a New York space, such a New York room.

So it's important that through the experience we pay homage to our food

and through the delivery of the food to the place we're in.

Our inspiration comes from fishermen, farmers, artisans all around New York.

What people don't realize when they think

about New York-- all they think of is Manhattan and this concrete jungle.

But we're on the Atlantic coast, which is one

of the most amazing waters for seafood.

Also, when you drive just a half an hour north,

you reach farmland for hours and hours and miles and miles.

The Hudson Valley, the Finger Lakes have some of the most amazing conditions

for agriculture, because of its soil, the surrounding waters,

and its amazing climate.

But in addition what we have, we have New York City.

Hundreds of years of history.

Immigrants from all over the world came to settle this place.

They all brought food traditions.

These traditions have evolved, and new traditions have been created.

Eating at Eleven Madison Park is the intersection--

I can hear my business partner, Will, laugh through the [INAUDIBLE].

It's the intersection between, on one side we have these amazing ingredients,

the amazing agriculture, and on the other side

we have this rich history and culture of New York, the place that is our home.

But that's not why I am here today.

I'm here to talk about acid, and acids in food.

Where is the acid?

My staff hears me say this more than they probably care to remember.

But where is the acid is really the central question

when we create a new dish.

When seasoning foods, everyone talks about salt.

I believe acid is just as important-- maybe more important-- than salt.

When I grew up in Switzerland, I was always drawn to acidic foods.