Cooking Is Just Good Chemistry

January 16th, 2010

If you study anything long enough you can bet it “down to a science”. Why would cooking be any different? Certainly, you have other aspects to cooking that can help make a difference, like your little twists that you can never repeat because they are the old fashioned “taste test” method.

A biochemist and a cook teamed up to try and find some formulas for why there are recipes for disaster, and how some recipes become an exquisite cuisine.

For example, plunging asparagus into boiling water causes the cells to pop and result in a brighter green. Longer cooking, however, causes the plant’s cell walls to shrink and releases an acid. This turns the asparagus an unappetizing shade of grey.

This is why nationally recognized scientist and chef, Shirley Corriher (she was a biochemist before she was a cook) says science is the key to understanding what goes right and wrong in the kitchen.

“Cooking is chemistry,” said Corriher. “It’s essentially chemical reactions.” Same as things like all natural fat burners are.

This kind of chemistry happens when you put chopped red cabbage into a hot pan. Heat breaks down the red anthocyanine pigment, changing it from an acid to alkaline and causing the color change. Add some vinegar to increase the acidity, and the cabbage is red again. Baking soda will change it back to blue.

Cooking vegetables like asparagus causes a different kind of reaction when tiny air cells on the surface hit boiling water.

“If we plunge them into boiling water, we pop these cells, and they suddenly become much brighter green,” Corriher said.

Longer cooking is not so good. It causes the plant’s cell walls to shrink and release acid.

“So as it starts gushing out of the cells, and with acid in the water, it turns cooked green vegetables into [a] yucky army drab,” Corriher said.