The microbiologist dashed round the class offering 12-year-olds a taste of chocolate from a saucepan, while the three-Michelin-starred chef whipped chocolate cream over ice. The minister of education looked on, evoking le bon respect de la cuisine de grand-mere.

Pupils at the College Anne Frank, a lower secondary school in east Paris, were launching their Artistic and Cultural Project (PAC), part of a five-year national initiative to give arts and culture a central place in the classroom. For education minister Jack Lang, the PACs are all-encompassing, with schools able to focus on heritage, design or architecture, as well as art, music, literature or the performing arts.

They also cover culinary arts and heritage, and since it was also la semaine du gout - Food Appreciation Week - Mr Lang chose to visit a school which for three years has emphasised food and nutritional studies. He was accompanied by top chef Pierre Gagniere and Herve This, a scientist from the National Institute of Agronomic Research who invented “molecular gastronomy’’, a series of workshops for the “Taste PACs’’. Some experiments he has devised explore why egg whites foam when whisked, propagate micro-organisms as a way of encouraging hygiene, observe grape fermentation in wine-making and explain butter, yogurt and cream-making.

The visitors had started with a talk on the dangers of overeating with a class from the oldest year, before moving on to bread-making, with Mr This explaining the chemical actions of yeast and starch. They mixed and kneaded, and later took the dough home for baking.

Then it was time for the hands-on chocolate mousse lesson, with attention to such details as what difference egg yolks made. Some first-years did a “sensory analysis” comparing industrial and home-made products.

School head Francine Saucier introduced studies of food, taste and diet when she arrived in 1998. They continue all year, feature in all subjects, and include recipe writing and educational breakfasts. “We have a dietician and explain what is needed for a healthy breakfast - dairy products, cereals, fruit; everything to nourish the brain.