When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe, you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful bacteria and fungi. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses. In Culinary Reactions, author Simon Quellen Field turns measuring cups, stovetop burners, and mixing bowls into graduated cylinders, Bunsen burners, and beakers. How does altering the ratio of flour, sugar, yeast, salt, butter, and water affect how high bread rises? Why is whipped cream made with nitrous oxide rather than the more common carbon dioxide? And why does Hollandaise sauce call for “clarified” butter? This easy-to-follow primer even includes recipes to demonstrate the concepts being discussed, including: &· Whipped Creamsicle Topping—a foam &· Cherry Dream Cheese—a protein gel &· Lemonade with Chameleon Eggs—an acid indicator

French chemist and television personality Herve This uses recent research in chemistry, physics, and biology of food to challenge traditional beliefs about cooking and eating.

While many books proliferate elucidating the science behind the transformations during cooking, none teach the concepts of physics chemistry through problem solving based on culinary experiments as this one by renowned chemist and one of the founders of molecular gastronomy. Calculating and Problem Solving Through Culinary Experimentation offers an appealing approach to teaching experimental design and scientific calculations. Given the fact that culinary phenomena need physics and chemistry to be interpreted, there are strong and legitimate reasons for introducing molecular gastronomy in scientific curriculum. As any scientific discipline, molecular gastronomy is based on experiments (to observe the phenomena to be studied) and calculation (to fit the many data obtained by quantitative characterization of the studied phenomena), but also for making the theoretical work without which no real science is done, including refuting consequences of the introduced theories. Often, no difficult calculations are needed, and many physicists, in particular, make their first steps in understanding phenomena with very crude calculations. Indeed, they simply apply what they learned, before moving to more difficult math. In this book, the students are invited first to make simple experiments in order to get a clear idea of the (culinary) phenomena that they will be invited to investigate, and then are asked simple questions about the phenomena, for which they have to transform their knowledge into skills, using a clear strategy that is explained throughout. Indeed, the is "problem solving based on experiments", and all this about food and cooking. Key Features: Introduces readers to tips for experimental work Shows how simple scientific knowledge can be applied in understanding questions Provides a sound method ("strategy") for calculation in physics and chemistry Presents important definitions and laws for physical chemistry Gives confidence in one’s calculation skill and problem solving skills Explore physical and chemical phenomena that occur during cooking A unique mix of culinary arts and correct calculations, this book is useful to students as well as professors in chemistry, physics, biology, food science and technology.

Profiling a range of culinary pioneers working across the fields of art, science, theatre, catering and design, Experimental Eating demonstrates how current creative collaborations are pushing the boundaries of how we understand, experience and relate to food and the rituals of dining. The book encompasses unusual and cutting-edge foods, radical dining events, "kitchen laboratory" experiments, food sculptures and other documentation of the transient events that make up this field of work. A selection of short essays situate these contemporary practices alongside various historical and cultural contexts, including: a history of food in modern and contemporary art, such as Gordon Matta-Clarke's FOOD café, Rikrit Tiravanija's FREE and Pad Thai events, and Grizedale Arts and Yangjiany Group's makeshift cafe for Frieze Projects 2012; a study of the connections between dining, theatre and ritual; and a survey of recent research in science and technology, and how this may impact on how we make, eat and perceive food.

Contains the reports of state departments and officials for the preceding fiscal biennium.