Light years away from the perfect egg that fueled the culinary trend ten years ago, chef Daniel Humm has just carried out a futuristic demonstration in his three-star restaurant in New York, by preparing an omelette with using eggs that were not laid by chickens, but by science. We’ll explain it to you.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs! It’s also impossible to prepare a crème brûlée or a gin fizz without eggs. And yet, in New York, it is precisely this type of preparation that the great three-star chef Daniel Humm concocted for a very special dinner a few days ago. To those who still wonder if the egg arrived before or after the chicken, the Swiss chef who had the honor of obtaining the title of best restaurant in the world in 2017 by the ranking of the “50 best awards” for his table Eleven Madison Park has moved to a more current issue by using eggs that do not come from any animal species to prepare all of these recipes.
Daniel Humm has in fact cooked with a completely new kind of egg – science fiction, some would say, which is the fruit of nine years of research. It was designed from the extraction of proteins from a conventional egg, the DNA sequences of which were preserved in order to cultivate them with a strain of yeast (specifically Komagataella phaffii). Then, the mixture is fermented in a sugar-based solution and the proteins are removed to form an egg. The recipe, which required no less than $233 million in investments, was concocted by a Californian start-up. Entitled The Every Company, the company had a great launch with this dinner concocted by Daniel Humm.
The demonstration was not in fact carried out just anywhere. The one that was named the best restaurant in the world when the Swiss chef was still cooking alongside his famous partner Will Guidara, took a vegan turn in 2021. When it reopened after the succession of confinements that we experienced, Daniel Humm announced now prefer to serve dishes based on fruits, vegetables, land and sea plants, mushrooms or even cereals. No less was needed to mark Eleven Madison Park as the first three-star restaurant serving neither meat nor eggs.
This henless egg has many advantages under its shell. Its manufacturing benefits from large-scale partnerships such as that of the AB inBev group, the largest brewing group in the world with brands such as Corona or Budweiser in its portfolio, but also from investments, such as the actress Anne Hathaway. Its inventors also brandish nutritional arguments. The recipe reportedly contains no cholesterol or saturated fat and provides only eight grams of protein per serving.
Following this dinner, the Californian start-up called on restaurateurs to in turn serve this chicken-free egg next year. Will three-star San Francisco chef Dominique Crenn add this ingredient to her gourmet menu? We are right to ask the question since last summer, she was, with the famous chef José Andrès, the first chef to serve chicken made in a laboratory. Last June, the United States gave the green light to the sale of this type of new product, which until now only Singapore had marketed. For his part, Dominique Crenn cooked chicken from the company Upside Foods while José Andrès chose that from Good Meat for his Washington restaurant.
