I don't know anything about laboratory uses of agar, but I do use it in cooking. Something that baffles me is that so many recipes (at least in northern Europe) use gelatin when agar works just as well or better. Agar is cheaper, easier to handle, comes in more compact packaging, lasts longer, sets faster, is reversible, fits more food preferences, etc. Why this obsession with gelatin? What am I missing?

The article contains one possible clue: gelatin melts at body temperature. This implies dishes made with gelatin melt in the mouth like chocolate does, but I can't recall experiencing that (at least not to the extent of chocolate) when eating gelatin-based stuff. (And many gels, at least in my opinion, have a better mouthfeel when more solid than liquid.)

Gelatine melts at a lower temperature and has a much better mouthfeel for most of these traditional recipes. It is creamy and adds body to a stock or sauce. Agar is brittle and requires a higher temperature to set. Agar would be a good choice for something where you want it to stay in a particular shape, but it is much more of a one-trick pony when it comes to cooking. Each can act as a poor man's version of the other, but neither really hits the same features as the other.

Agar is great for a gel, especially one you want to stand up to a bit of heat and remain stable at room temp, and I would always reach for it instead of gelatine when doing most desserts or pastry work. OTOH I would only use it in a sauce if I needed to accommodate a vegan guest.

> Why this obsession with gelatin? What am I missing?

Probably just tradition. It's pretty easy to "accidentally" make gelatin when making a broth, and intentionally making it only requires heat and bones, which are essentially pure waste. Whereas agar is a product that you have to buy in a store, and wasn't even available in the West until somewhat recently.

Of course, everybody just buys gelatin in the stores these days, and agar is almost as easy to find, but old recipes tend to be handed down for generations.

I was unaware (until I read the article) that it was used in cooking.

There is a family story that I had been fed a good deal of agar as a baby since my parents were poor but my father was at a state university and the agar was able to walk out the door with him from lab classes (and I think he worked as a lab assistant/technician to pay for school).

If you’ve had soups and broth made with lots of bones, and you want to recreate that same mouth feel and experience without using loads of bones, then you can achieve that by using gelatin, because gelatin is exactly what the first dish had that yours is missing. It’s literally the missing ingredient if you’re not cooking with the bones.

Also, they simply aren’t perfect replacements for each other. Agar and gelatin are certainly similar in many ways, but the are not the same.

> can't recall experiencing that (at least not to the extent of chocolate) when eating gelatin-based stuff.

The traditional jelly around the outside meat of British pork pie would frankly be weird texture (and probably horrible) if it was made from agar. It really has got to be made from pork bones to be authentic. It does melt in the mouth, when the pie is properly made - sadly rare these days.