Fusion Cuisine Education and Its Relation with Molecular Gastronomy Education (Comparative Course Content Analysis)

The development of gastronomy science caused an increase in the diversification and amount of food-beverage production. Increased and diversified food-beverage production provided commercial value to gastronomy. The greatest factor that provided this commercial value is the spendable income of individuals which increased with the industrial revolution and being able to eat outside their homes, due to their free time. The occurrence of this fact triggered food-beverage businesses to operate as commercial enterprises and made the element of gastronomy an important industry. The development of the industry caused new tendencies to occur with the aim of product diversification. Today, the most important movement developed by businesses is described as molecular gastronomy and fusion cuisine practices. The conceptual relation between fusion cuisine education and molecular gastronomy course contents, the interaction between course contents and course philosophy and course contents in three different programmes of gastronomy education are examined in this study. Within this scope, it is determined that there is a conceptual confusion in defining the courses, and thus there are differences between course content and the basic philosophy of the course. This result revealed the problem of efficiently performing fusion cuisine practices and molecular gastronomy courses. Following the study, recommendations are developed in order to resolve this problem.