Pasteur, Louis (1822–95) was a French chemist and microbiologist whose researches had a profound effect on the foods we eat today. Many people embrace and glorify traditional foods and the age-old methods by which they are prepared. Although this view has much to recommend it, nonetheless there are drawbacks. Traditional foods are often made on a small scale. This restricts their enjoyment to a tiny section of the population, often already privileged, and often the stamping-ground of gourmets. There is no need for gastronomy to be so élitist. At the same time, the makers of traditional foods, especially if they are themselves ‘traditional’, have but a hazy idea what is actually happening to the foods as they make them. In the way of scientists whose experiments no one else can replicate, so each traditional food producer is almost unique, his craft surrounded by vast swaths of mumbo-jumbo (terroir might be an example). It took the efforts of people like Pasteur to lift this veil of ignorance (even when that ignorance was informed by long practice and instinct), and allow us to understand the materials we deploy in the kitchen.
