Experimental chef and Catey winner Heston Blumenthal is one of four European restaurateurs picked to take part in an EC-funded project to boost creativity in cooking by giving chefs access to innovative technologies and know-how practised by industry.
Along with Blumenthal's Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, the three-year project involves Spain's El Bulli, France's La Table d'Anvers and Germany's Bistro Grasshoff Nachf.
Also involved in the €1.1m programme, called Inicon, are a German engineering firm, a seaweed gelling specialist from Portugal, a Spanish aroma company, a Parisian food college and the molecular gastronomy group of France's Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique.
The partners will team up on projects that will include aroma conservation, combining aromas, and changing the properties of substances - such as hot ice-cream.
Blumenthal said he was flattered to be picked. "It is so relevant to what I have been working on, and there is nothing going on like this in the world," he said. "There is a lot of potential for innovative interaction."
Although the focus will be on cooking processes rather than products, an initial project will be to develop, test and market a hi-tech kitchen mixer for cooks.
Blumenthal also expected the publication of a dictionary of molecular gastronomy that would describe basic processes and list useful addresses of specialist suppliers.