In 1969, an Oxford physicist named Nicholas Kurti went on British television and used a medical syringe to inject brandy into hot mince pies. This episode traces the full biography of molecular gastronomy, from its overlooked roots in 1930s American home economics departments to the eccentric scientists who named it and the elite restaurant kitchens that made it famous.

Along the way we explain the real chemistry behind everyday cooking: colloids in mayonnaise, collagen hydrolysis in a slow-braised brisket, syneresis in yogurt, and why alcohol can cook an egg without heat. We also cover the lab tools and ingredients that transformed fine dining, and the 2006 backlash when star chefs rejected the very label that made them famous.

• How Belle Lowe’s 1932 textbook Experimental Cookery laid the scientific groundwork for the movement
• Kurti’s unconventional experiments, from cooking sausages with a car battery to slow-roasting lamb at 80 degrees Celsius
• Hervé This and his quest to test 25,000 kitchen proverbs, and the 1992 Erice workshop that gave the discipline its name
• The science of meat glue, maltodextrin oil powders, and spherification into edible caviar
• Why Ferran Adrià and Heston Blumenthal distanced themselves from the term molecular gastronomy