AS JUNKETS go, it was a disappointment. Of the hundred-odd representatives of the world's media crammed into a television studio in West London on August 5th none got so much as a bite. What they did get, though, was, just possibly, a taste of the future of food. For the modest meal your correspondent and the others gathered to witness consisted of the world's first hamburger made of meat that had been grown from scratch in a laboratory.

What the 140 gram patty (pictured above) lacked in heft it made up for in price. At more than €250,000 ($330,000)—stumped up in part by Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin—it must rank among the most expensive dishes in history. After sizzling in a pan for a few minutes under the watchful eye of a British chef, two pre-selected tasters, a nutritional scientist and a food writer, dug in. Their verdict, "not that juicy", did not perturb Mark Post, of Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, who had grown the beef. In fact, Dr Post, who also savoured his creation had every reason to call it "a good start".

Besides powdered egg (for binding) and beetroot juice and saffron (to enhance colour), the patty was composed entirely of cultured muscle cells. To make it, Dr Post began with stem cells, which he harvested from two live cows (for the connoisseurs, the shoulders of a Blanc Blue Belge and a Blond Acquitaine). These were then multiplied a trillionfold, merging into "myotubes", each less than 3mm long. The myotubes were placed in a petri dish, around a central hub made of gel, and fed a diet of plant-derived amino acids, sugars and fats.

Muscle cells' natural tendency to contract and relax meant that the myotubes, once anchored to the hub, wrapped around it, bulked up through continued exercise regime of contraction and relaxation and coalesced into a ring of muscle tissue. Each ring was then cut to create a strand, 20,000 of which made up the historic patty. They took three months to grow, which is, as Dr Post points out, "faster than a cow".

It may have been a far cry from a Porterhouse, which would require growing the cells in three dimensions and delivering nutrients deep inside the tissue, for instance by using scaffolds made of biodegradable polymer tubes. And the patty contained no fat cells, which are much trickier to culture (and the lack of which explains the tasters' tepid response), though Dr Post and his team are working on it. But it was nonetheless, as both tasters averred, very much "like meat".

Carnivores should cheer. Nearly one-third of the world's ice-free land is already used to raise livestock and mankind's appetite for meat is forecast to grow by 70% by 2050. If it is to be slaked, Dr Post's innovation, or something like it, may prove necessary. Vegetarians, too, have reason to egg him on. A single sample of stem cells could produce 20,000 tonnes of "cultured beef", enough to make 175m quarter-pounders that would otherwise require 440,000 cattle to be slaughtered. Finally, animal husbandry is responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions (cattle produce prodigious quantities of methane, a more potent greenhouse-gas than carbon dioxide). Growing meat in factories—or indeed your home—would help reduce that. Add a bit of ketchup, and what's not to like?
Correction: The original version of this article said that the historic burger was fried on August 3rd. That should have been August 5th. The author must still have been thinking of the weekend. Apologies.