The more we started to cook for ourselves, the more we began to understand the processes involved. When you watch a cooking show or take a cooking class, you learn to produce one dish or meal in one manner. Chefs are often seen as culinary artists who are well-trained in the culinary arts. That is only partially true. In this post, we will explain the other parts of cooking which are physics and chemistry.
It’s not Scary, it’s Fun with Science!
Ok, we admit the words physics and chemistry can scare people. Let’s not go there. Why? Because if you are already producing your food by way of cooking, canning, drying, etc. you already understand physics and chemistry even though you may not realize it fully yet. This is what we started to learn.
The first-place cooking made sense to me in Alton Brown’s show Good Eats. The show was intentionally quirky and campy however it taught scientific methodologies that could be applied across the cooking spectrum. The more I learned, the more I started researching cooking as a science. Digging further we would read books such as
- ‘On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen’
- ‘The Science of Cooking: Every Question Answered to Perfect Your Cooking’
- ‘The Food Lab’
- ‘Fat, Salt, Acid, Heat’
With these and many more learnings, we realized good food was one part ingredients, one part physics, one part chemistry,y and one part the arts. Let’s talk about why that is the case and why it matters.
From the Broad to the Specific
This post introduces the idea of understanding chemistry and physics in cooking. That is a big topic that has many different concepts. As a result, as with other early posts, we will introduce the broad idea here and the why behind it. As our experiments and learning continue, we will refer back to this in those sub-topics
Repeatable Results Come From Understanding
In another post, we discussed how to read a recipe. We will expand on it here. When you follow a recipe you are following a process. Almost anyone can do that successfully if the recipe is perfect and you follow everything exactly. That is what great cooks do. How many times has that worked for most people? Empirically our guess is not as often as most would like but why?
You can learn terms and watch videos but what is generally left out is the process going on. Why do we cook some items at an oven temperature of 300℉ and others at 400℉? Have you ever noticed that your cookies may come out differently if baked on a silicone mat rather than a piece of parchment paper? Both of those are due to a mix of chemistry and physics and you can use that to your advantage.
You Still Don’t Need Algebra
We aren’t suggesting that everyone read the Principia Mathematica and learn Calculus to make a PB&J sandwich. What we are suggesting is trying to get an idea of why something you are making will help you be better at making it. It can also help you avoid mistakes and learn to fix things when they go bad.
By knowing what processes are at work you can read a recipe for mistakes. You can also catch yourself making them. In the case of cookies, we mentioned, it is about heat transfer. Silicone does not transfer heat as readily as the parchment paper. In the case of cookies based on the creaming butter and sugar, the silicone version will cook slower, melt and expand more, and be slightly denser than the ones done on parchment paper.
Chemistry vs Physics
Chemistry in our context is any process where two or more ingredients interact to create something new. Physics is any physical process that changes the state of the food to create something new. Let’s talk about balloons and bread, for example.
When making a quick bread you are creating air through chemical leavening. Depending on the PH of the dough you will most likely use double-acting baking powder and/or baking soda to the dough. When you do this you will create a chemical reaction that produces gases and water. Those gases and steam from the water lift and create air pockets in your dough to allow it to rise. They need physics to come along to help though.
Thermal transfer from the oven to the bread will be the catalyst for those gases. The baking powder and soda need heat to break down. By cooking the bread at a specific temperature and pan size, you control how the dough sets. The mixture of the two will create the bread’s mouthfeel and crumb.
Who Cares?
I have been on countless social media groups and forums where someone will ask for help. The questions are similar to “Why didn’t my bread rise?” or “Why did my jerky get too dry?”. My least favorite question I always see asked, “Is it Safe?!?” referring to something canned or fermented. All of those questions really can only be answered by chemistry and physics.
Knowing a little bit of science will also go a long way. Are you making an emulsion and did it break? By emulsion we mean, a salad dressing, gravy, cheese sauce, chocolate, or any other type of food that has fat or oil suspended in water. By break, we mean separate, became lumpy, didn’t mix right, seized, etc. If you think of it as a simple emulsion you can learn how to avoid breaking it and fixing it if it does break. That’s science at work!
A Couple Tips
Anyone can learn to cook and make good-tasting food. We have learned that doing it consistently and learning the why and how of a recipe’s steps will make you better at it. Here are the two things we ask whenever we read a recipe
- What chemistry is taking place at each recipe step so we know where things can go wrong and avoid them?
- What physics is happening to the food during each step of the recipe with the same idea of avoiding errors?
It’s Still Art But It’s Backed By Science
Making something taste good, that is visually appealing, that has great contrasting textures and mouthfeel that someone wants to eat is an art. It is an art that uses science. By being curious about the science aspect, our knowledge grew much more quickly. We found that we had fewer dishes turn out bad and less food waste. Our increased knowledge let us then experiment with more confidence giving us a broader range of things we made.
Wrapping Up
In this post, we discussed why food is one part art, one part chemistry, and one part physics. We also gave examples of how knowing that can help us all be better cooks. If we arm ourselves with a little curiosity our knowledge will help us create connections to avoid mishaps and be more confident. By learning the science behind cooking we get to start focusing much more on the art of cooking which is where, for many, the real enjoyment of making something is.