I expected the process to be highly exacting and scientifical, but my first attempt at fake-it-‘til-you-make-it molecular gastronomy was spot on. Should I have hyphenated “spot-on”? It seems like the sentence already has too many little lines.

I mixed a cup of mango juice with a teaspoon of sodium alginate (not as scary as it sounds. It comes from seaweed… well, maybe that sounds scary too), turned on the heat and whisked the hell out of it. Once it started to boil, I let it go for a minute, strained it and dripped it into a bowl of water and calcium carbonate (it’s the main ingredient in Tums and a calcium supplement often added to soymilk). The result was a mound of shiny little pearls composed of a thin gummy layer surrounding a core of juice that popped when bitten into.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with my new creation. I think it’s time to make some funky cocktails.