Molecular gastronomy

''The Hungarian born physicist Nicholas Kurti (1908-1998) became Professor of Physics at Oxford in 1967, a post he held until his retirement in 1975. He was also visiting Professor at The City College of New York, the University of California, Berkeley, and Amherst College in Massachusetts. His hobby was cooking, and he was an enthusiastic advocate of applying scientific knowledge to culinary problems. He was one of the first television cooks in the UK, hosting a black and white television show in 1969 entitled "The Physicist in the Kitchen" where he demonstrated techniques such as using a syringe to inject hot mince pies with brandy in order to avoid disturbing the crust.
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During the presentation Kurti demonstrated making meringue in a vacuum chamber, the cooking of sausages by connecting them across a car battery, the digestion of protein by fresh pineapple juice, and a reverse baked alaska - hot inside, cold outside - cooked in a microwave oven.'' [source]

More about molecular gastronomy: here
Simple stuff, like how best to cook an egg, and an answer to that eternal question: what makes a soufflé rise and fall? As they experimented, the possibilities expanded and they started producing dishes radically distinct from any of the foods humans have been eating hitherto.

Low-temperature cooking
In low temperature cooking, the food to be cooked (typically a red meat, such as beef) is cooked for a long period of time (in the region of 10-20 hours) at a low temperature (in some cases, as low as 55°C, 130°F). [source]