Science of Cooking

What do we mean by cooking?

Well, the free dictionary (2013) states that cooking is ‘the act of preparing something, often food, by the application of heat. This sounds simple enough but what does that actually mean?

We know that if you increase the temperature inside an object that the molecules begin to behave differently, whether this is by moving quicker or even vibrating faster. This leads us to our first theory on why food changes during cooking. From a biological view point, denaturation occurs in organic molecules, for example, proteins when they are greatly heated. A strong example of this is in eggs where the protein albumin is present. This protein is soluble in water which is why the egg seems clear in water. However, when this protein s heated, the tertiary and secondary structure of the protein starts to bend, vibrate and twist. These movements cause the hydrogen bonds between the structures to break, this in turn effects the larger structure of proteins and cause them to become denatured. By having the protein denatured, the active sites on the proteins structure are now all but useless and so the proteins properties change, and in the example of albumin, it becomes an insoluble, solid, white mass. (Chemistry explained, 2013) This shows us an example of an irreversible cooking reaction.

Bibliography
 

Chemistry Explained, n.d. Denaturation. [Online]
Available at: http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Co-Di/Denaturation.html
[Accessed 10 3 2013].

 

The free dictionary, n.d. Cooking. [Online]
Available at: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cooking
[Accessed 10 3 2013].