ScienceAndCooking
Science and Cooking (Brenner, Sorensen, and Weitz)
- Average or worse overall, good insights in places.
- Texture molecules (Fat, Carbs and Protiens) with H20 make up the weight of our food.
- Changing the texture of foods is mainly manipulating the H20
- Cooking can break apart texture molecules and turn them into flavor molecules
- Heat causes the ingredients of food to fall apart.
Fats are arranged in 3 long carbon chains (containing C-H) that are connected at one end.
Saturated: Carbon chains are all lined up, Unsaturated the Carbon chains are all jumbled
- The transitino when cooking an egg is mainly due to protiens unfolding. (Same with cooking a steak or other high-protein foods)
- A starch is long chains of sugar molecules attached to each other.
- Protiens and Carbs can have electric charge. Adding other substances that is also charged it can change the folding and tast almost like adding heat.
- Salt alone has a similar effect to pH because it also changes the net charge of the protiens.
- No liquid we eat has a viscosity lower than H20.
- A material turns into a solid once the volume fraction is high enough for it to become jammed. Regardless of the material this happens at volume fraction of around 60 - 70%
- Plasticity is governed by th principles of packing and polymer networks as other solids, but now the polymers that make up the substance can slowly slide past each other, forming new bonds so they stay that way.
- The reason there are naturally occuring surfactants is b/c many of the molecules in biology have reasons to be both hydrophobic and hydrophilic. (eg: important in protien folding, cell walls)
- With foams you can mix a liquid and a gas and voila you have a solid.
- Fermented foods are foods that are cooked with life