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Custard: Where Eggs and Dairy Meet to Make Your Favourite Dessert
The world of sauces can be pretty intimidating. The French, in particular, have elevated sauce making to such an extraordinary extent that the whole idea of making a sauce can seem overwhelming. They have their mother sauces, their daughter sauces and a whole culinary tradition based specifically around sauces. To the French a good sauce Continue reading
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Egg whites: The art and science of edible foams
When considering the great florescence of thought and ideas that was the Enlightenment we tend to focus on the big ideas, the big innovations and the big thinkers like Voltaire, Locke and Adam Smith. But, as in any other time of great intellectual or technological change, there are other, smaller, ideas that fly under the Continue reading
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Saffron: The duplicitous golden spice
Humans have always displayed enormous ingenuity when it comes to short-changing their fellow man. Modern tech companies, with their opaque terms of service and relentless data farming, are a great recent example of this but to capture the eternal nature of man’s duplicity we need look no further than our daily repast. Since antiquity we Continue reading
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Starch and Gelatinisation in Everyday Cooking
I’m no historian but I think it would be fair to say that for most of history most humans relied primarily on starchy grains and vegetables to keep themselves and their families fed. Grasses like wheat, rice, oats and barley are easy to grow and the seeds, or grains, of these grasses are rich in Continue reading
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Fermentation I: Beer and chemistry
I had a long break over Christmas and these are a few of the meals I had during that break: at the local pizza joint a pepperoni pizza washed down with beer, a trip to the German club where I had a pork knuckle with sauerkraut washed down with beer, a trip to a French Continue reading
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Understanding Emulsions II: Mayonnaise
In my mind mayonnaise has always been kind of a Jekyll and Hyde sauce. We all know what mayonnaise is and we all have a bottle of mayonnaise in the fridge. But we also have homemade mayonnaise, a sauce that can be richer tasting but which can also vary greatly depending on what oil and Continue reading
chemistry, cholesterol, eggs, emulsifier, emulsions, Food, lipid, mayonnaise, micelle, oil, proteins, Science, vinaigrette#cooking, cholesterol, eggs, emulsifier, emulsion, Food, food science, HDL, LDL, lipid, mayonnaise, micelle, recipe, recipes, salads, Science -
Mastering the science of sugar: From simple syrups to caramel
I’ve been catching up on the latest series of the Great British Bake Off and in one episode, amongst all the usual drama of collapsing pastries and sagging cakes, the contestants were overcooking their caramel for the Banoffee Pie technical and it made me think about sugar. In recent posts I’ve talked a lot about Continue reading
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Hurts so good: The painful pleasure of chillies
When I was running a medical research laboratory I was part of long running research project in Issan province in the north-eastern part of Thailand. One of the perks of working on this project was frequent trips to Thailand to work with Thai and American colleagues. My first visits were close to twenty years ago Continue reading
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Quick bite: Osmosis and your next BBQ
My recent post about cooking steak got a bit long. To shorten it I had to cut some things that I still think are pretty important when cooking your steak. One of the things I cut was a discussion about osmosis and how to salt your steak before cooking. Both of these issues are really Continue reading
The Science of Food 