Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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What's actually happening to your food when you cook it? Harvard physicist David Weitz and Sorted Food's Ben Ebbrell reveal the science hidden inside everyday cooking — from why mayonnaise becomes a solid, to how meringue defies physics, to what a martini has in common with a bag of salt. Watch Part 2 here: youtu.be/XIf83okkgiU

This talk was filmed at the Ri on the 18th April 2026.
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In this lecture — the UK premiere of Harvard's celebrated Science and Cooking series — Ben cooks live on stage while David explains the physics and chemistry behind every step. You'll never look at an emulsion, a foam, or a loaf of focaccia the same way again.
This is Part 1 — covering herb oil, emulsions, and the science of mayonnaise. Part 2 covers focaccia elasticity, baked Alaska, and cocktail physics.
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David Weitz is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, where his research focuses on the physics of soft condensed matter. A member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering, he is the founder of Harvard's Science and Cooking public lecture series — a programme that has drawn over 45,000 live attendees and more than six million YouTube views worldwide.
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Ben Ebbrell is a co-founder of Sorted Food, one of the UK's most-loved food YouTube channels with nearly 3 million subscribers. A trained chef, he won the Good Food Channel's "next celebrity chef" competition and was named in The Guardian's 30 Under 30 for digital media. Sorted Food has released 7 cookbooks, a popular app, and a range of live shows dedicated to making great cooking accessible to everyone.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction – Harvard's Science & Cooking course
1:49 How it all started: Ferran Adrià comes to Harvard
3:04 Designing the course: chefs meet scientists
4:04 Inside the lab: you can eat your experiment
5:37 The molten chocolate cake and the diffusion equation
7:15 Meet Ben Ebbrell – Sorted Food
13:38 Why chip pan fires are so dangerous (live demo)
15:07 Making herb oil: extracting chlorophyll with heat
19:15 Two liquids become a solid: the science of mayonnaise
22:48 What is an emulsion? Oil, water, and lecithin explained
24:07 Why emulsions turn solid: volume fraction and elasticity
26:12 The equation of the week
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