Science of Cooking: Ask the Inquisitive Cooks! (2024)

FAQs

What is the science behind cooking food? ›

Conduction: direct contact with a heat source, such as in a cooking pan. This is generally directional, and it helps you sauté scallops or sear steak, for example. Convection: heat transfer via air or water. This happens in an oven and is more even in nature, meaning your roast beef gets warmed all the way around.

Creaming is an extremely important step that ultimately has a big effect on the texture of a cake. As you cream, you are beating together fat and sugar with an electric mixer, or a wooden spoon and some muscle power. The jagged edges of the sugar crystals drag in air, lightening the butter in both color and texture.

While cooks and chefs don't need science or math degrees, they do need a working knowledge of the principles of numbers, chemistry, and biology.

All cooking is scientific in nature, but with baking there is a very specific scientific interplay between ingredients.

Cooking isn't just an art; it's a science. We'll help you understand the physical and chemical processes that make food look, smell, and taste the way it does. Why On Earth Are People Putting Olive Oil in Their Coffee? Does Vodka Sauce Really Need Vodka?

It's a way of thinking, an ability to see that everything you do from the moment you step into the kitchen to the last dish you dry is part of a single, simple process. You realize that the “perfect” way to prepare any dish is whatever happens to work with you and your meal.

The Maillard reaction creates brown pigments in cooked meat in a very specific way: by rearranging amino acids and certain simple sugars, which then arrange themselves in rings and collections of rings that reflect light in such a way as to give the meat a brown color.

Dusting/Dredging

This involves sprinkling sugar or spices over food as a decoration. A recipe may also ask you to 'dust' a work surface with flour or icing sugar to stop dough or fondant icing from sticking before kneading and rolling it out. A tea strainer or fine sieve is suitable for dusting.

Humans have been cooking for millions of years.

If you feel uncomfortable in the kitchen, you're not alone. But remember that humans have been cooking for a very long time, we're talking since about 2 million years ago. And the earliest oven dates back to 29,000 B.C. So take a step back and be confident!

What are the 4 things of cooking? ›

Chef Calls 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' The 4 Elements Of Good Cooking.

Among the very basic principles that guide scientists, as well as many other scholars, are those expressed as respect for the integrity of knowledge, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness.