You mix together chemicals and compounds, delicately adding them and heating them at specific temperatures to get a desirable output. You often have to care for other factors like air flow (how much to leave the pot closed or open) and material weight (like not adding too much in a cake or it’ll all sink to the bottom).
A kitchen is just a laboratory, and chefs are just scientists that focus on taste. I get it now.
Watch some Good Eats with Alton Brown, he talks a lot about the chemistry involved in cooking
J Kenji Lopez too.
Also a core concept in the novel/AppleTV series Lessons In Chemistry:
That’s what I was going to say :)
Legit, I was a passable cook before good eats. After watching it for a while, not only did it give me a bit of passion for cooking, but I got good at it. Then serious eats came along and helped me refine some more. Once you start thinking of cooking and baking as controlled chemical reactions, it makes things easier to grasp.
Gives you not only the how but the why, which just opens up a bunch of other learning types for cooking.
“Cooking is jazz. Baking is science.”
“Baking is chemistry for hungry people”
I like scientific cooking. I’m a big fan of Sebastian Lege, who is a cook and food designer, and who knows all the little chemical tricks of the food industry. I wish he would publish a cook book: On the left, a recipe for the dish as made by a professional chef with normal ingredients, on the right the recipe for the same dish as made by the food industry.
I remember one show where he made “Banana Milk”. The banana flavor was made from vinegar, some alcohol, and some other acid…
Just today, I applied one of his ideas. I made a Chinese dish with chicken, and added baking powder to the marinade made from soy sauce, ginger, garlic, honey, salt, oil, and chili. And it was amazing!
What a fun thread! If any of you get a chance, you should see “Lessons in Chemistry” with Brie Larson. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and based on the excitement in this thread, I think you might too. ☺️
Chemistry but wirh a high margin for error and where someone can make a ketchup sandwich and claim its good food.
I worked as chemist for a while and I love to cook. It’s fairly common hobby along with home brewing, distilling and cheese making. We also all worked in the food industry so lots of overlap
It certainly is! And you can eat the results!
You can eat the results of your chemistry class, too, if you’re punk rock.
Tight. Tight tight!
Or you were working with your old chemistry teacher
Someone is watching Lessons on Chemistry.
Better living through chemistry
Baking is applied chemistry. Cooking is jazz
My mom teaches a class on the chemistry of food and cooking. And my dad says that a good chemist generally is a good cook
…and chemistry is just layman’s physics.
And physics is just math for kids.
That’s like the plot of the TV series “Lessons in chemistry” (which is based on a book), lmao.
Baking even moreso.
