By Sam Wong
Zhanna Tretiakova/Alamy
IF YOU eat at fancy places, you may have encountered orbs of sauce or puree, held inside a membrane, that burst in your mouth. Making them involves a little chemistry, but it can be done at home.
Now a staple of modernist cuisine, the spherification technique was patented in 1942 by food scientist William Peschardt and later popularised by chef Ferran Adrià at El Bulli restaurant in north-east Spain in the 2000s.
To try it, you need two special ingredients that can be ordered online. One is a salt called sodium alginate, which comes from brown algae. Alginate is formed …
