Search Results for: science

The Science of Pâte à Choux

Choux is a truly ingenious invention, though it almost certainly wasn’t “invented” in the classic sense of the word. It evolved, probably through decades, maybe even centuries, of trial and error. The secret of choux is that it’s “double cooked”, a process that imbues it with some very special properties.

If you’ve made éclair or cream puff shells before, you probably recall the process. Water and butter are combined in a sauce pan and heated to the boil, at which point enough flour is added to turn the mixture into a fairly stiff paste. That paste is then cooked over low heat until it forms a ball, which is then finished by beating in several eggs, one after the other. It’s then piped and baked (the second “cooking”). Interesting. Curious. But what does it all mean?

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Flatbread Science

Many experienced chapati makers have observed that I’m fiddling with tradition here. It’s true. Indeed I am varying the flours and the liquids in order to get to a softer, more toothsome homemade product. Don’t infer from that statement that I don’t think traditional recipes give good results, but ingredients and…ehem…the manipulators of those ingredients, vary highly from place to place. I should be using atta, traditional Indian chapati flour, but I can get any. As a result the all-whole wheat flour and all-water recipes weren’t delivering bread anywhere near as good as I remember from the real Indian meals I’ve had.

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The Science of Taste

Would you believe that up until about fifteen years ago there wasn’t much? It’s true. Scientists knew virtually nothing about how the human taste sense actually functioned. Sure, we had these types of simple diagrams, but as far as determining exactly how human sensory organs intercepted and interpreted flavors, there was virtually no data. That began to change in the mid-1990’s when scientists in the US and Europe finally started to hold some long-held assumptions about taste up to scientific scrutiny. What they found was that there was far more to the perception of taste than anyone had ever imagined.

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What’s the Science of Marshmallow?

That’s a good question, reader Jay. Marshmallow is one of the simpler foams, but still an interesting object to contemplate. It’s primarily a sugar syrup with lots of air whipped into it, though it wouldn’t hold up for terribly long if it didn’t have some sort of support. That support is usually gelatin.

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What’s the science behind “Heritage” frosting?

So asks reader Pepper. That’s a good question. I presume what you’re really asking, Pepper, is how a mixture of flour, milk, butter and powdered sugar manages to stand in so well for a standard buttercream. The truth of the matter is that there’s not all that much difference between a heritage “cooked flour” buttercream and a standard buttercream, save for the fact that heritage frosting replaces half the butter — a fat and water emulsion — with a starch “gel”.

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What’s the science behind baked Alaska?

As you’ve no doubt guessed already, meringue is a terrific insulator. It’s made of thousands upon thousands of tiny bubbles, and each one of them works like a little air gap, slowing down the transfer of heat from the oven to the ice cream. Still air, you see, doesn’t move heat very well.

Thus meringue is great at putting the hammer down on convective heat transfer, i.e. movement of heat via air flows (or liquid flows). It’s not so good at preventing the other two major modes of heat transfer: conductive (objects of different temperatures in physical contact with one another) or radiant (electromagnetic radiation). The good news there is that most of the heat transfer that occurs in a home oven is of the convective kind. Clever fellow, that Rumford guy.

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Looks like I’m going on a science bender.

I was planning to wind down the leavening chemistry thing at this point, but I’m getting so many questions about baking powder now that I’m thinking I need to press on. Since I’ve also received a few requests for banana bread the last several months, I think I’ll make that the project for the week. […]

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