The eureka moment for Josh Tetrick came in the form of a foul-tasting muffin. The flavour was awful but it had risen in exactly the way a cake should. That was how he knew he and his team were finally on to something.
It was last year, 15 months since Mr Tetrick and a friend in San Francisco had started Hampton Creek Foods, a company formed around the challenge of how to replace the egg in cooking.
Their aim is not to help people who are allergic to hens’ eggs or about making products for vegans or even for the much larger market of people who are worried about cholesterol. Hampton Creek aims to figure out a way to make all kinds of food more affordable and its production less harmful to the environment.