ABSTRACT
In order to describe existing or possible food systems, as well as physical changes of food ingredients during “culinary” processes, a preliminary version of the “disperse system formalism” (DSF) was first introduced under the name “complex disperse system” (CDS) formalism, later improved with the addition of the “non-periodical organization of space” formalism. Dishes are indeed physico-chemical systems, with chemical composition and physical structure. In order to describe the microstructure of colloidal systems, and of food systems in particular, the CDS formalism was introduced at the European Congress on Interface Science in 2002. DSF was initially introduced for the analysis of the differences between different kinds of “gels”, but it is also useful for innovation. The importance of algebraic notation has been recognized for many centuries, and it was a major success of Rene Descartes, Wilhelm Gottfried von Leibniz and Isaac Newton to use it in mathematics and physics.
