Chemistry in Your Kitchen

Front Cover
Royal Society of Chemistry, Dec 29, 2016 - Cooking - 320 pages

Whether you know it or not, you become a chemist any time you step into a kitchen. As you cook, you oversee intricate chemical transformations that would test even the most hardened of professional chemists.

Focussing on how and why we cook different dishes the way we do, this book introduces basic chemistry through everyday foods and meal preparations. Through its unique meal-by-meal organisation, the book playfully explores the chemistry that turns our food into meals. Topics covered range from roasting coffee beans to scrambling eggs and gluten development in breads. The book features many experiments that you can try in your own kitchen, such as exploring the melting properties of cheese, retaining flavour when cooking and pairing wines with foods.

Through molecular chemistry, biology, neuroscience, physics and agriculture, the author discusses various aspects of cooking and food preparation. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the science behind cooking.

 

Contents

Coffee
3
Flavor Extraction
15
References
21
Pigs are Magic
29
Food Safety and Evolution
36
Eggs
42
EggCellent Research
49
References
58
Water In Water Out Balance
158
Saucy
167
Delicious by Any Definition
173
Its About Time
195
More Meat Time
196
References
212
Jillian Dempsey
221
Gretchen Keller
227

References
77
Jelly
81
Lets Jam
87
Molecular Schmolecular
94
Macaroni and Cheese
100
On and Off
107
References
117
Citizen Scientists
124
References
134
Back to the Basics
152
Beer
235
A Monster Mash
245
Sending Them Off
252
References
273
Churning
283
References
290
Bread
297
Epilogue
305
Copyright

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About the author (2016)

Matthew R Hartings is an Assistant Professor at the American University, where he runs a chemistry of cooking class that is very popular with non-science majors.

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