I played lots with liquid nitrogen as a graduate student in molecular biology and genetics back in the mid-1980s (the music was so bad I listened to baseball games on the radio during evening lab sessions).

A 24-year-old man from Stahnsdorf near Berlin was poised to try out a new recipe from the school of molecular cooking, which aims to apply scientific processes to gastronomy.

There was an "enormous explosion", according to the Berliner Morgenpost daily.

The man lost one hand in the explosion and the other was so badly injured it had to be amputated.