04/06/2012 [DMFA# 1314] Tastes like a shoe

[e_voyager]

I guess they are exceptions to every rule and rules to every exception.

[Naldru]

I say cooking can be more like an art than a science, sure you can follow a recipe carefully and often get consistent results, but a truly wonderful culinary creation takes improvisation and imagination.

But it has a larger chance of failing dramatically if you don't apply science to it.

But it is fun to just experiment without bounds- as long as you don't kill yourself accidentally because of it.

Here's one example of spectacular failure if you get things wrong.  The chemistry of cooking class was at a culinary school.  Experimentation is fine but understanding how the cooking process works as well as understanding how taste and smell works can enable you to determine what went wrong and to make it better the next time.

[Lurkie]

Actually, he baked it meaning, that he put a  hockey puck in the oven. And then put icing and candles on it.

That'd be one heck of a hockey puck!  Who plays the game, the Big Giant Griffins?  (One can just imagine the property damage...)

I once saw a Chemistry of Cooking course on a syllabus.  Many baking processes are actually polymerization reactions.  A cake becoming harder during baking is actually like the heating of a thermosetting plastic.  Taking such a course would prevent you from trying to bake cookies with saccharin instead of sugar, since the sugar is actually undergoing a chemical process in the baking process as well as providing sweets.  Broiling meats is also a chemical process.  A knowledge of physics can also be a help during cooking, as knowledge of heat transfer can ensure that the material is evenly cooked instead of being raw on the inside and caramelized on the outside.

Now that's a class I'd like to take, it sounds like a lot of fun.  BTW, there's even more to baking with sugar than the polymerization.  When you beat butter to softness (i.e., cream it) you're beating air into it.  When you slowly add sugar to the creamed butter, you're doing more of the same thing:  The jagged surfaces of the sugar grains trap air, and incorporate it into the batter.  When the batter is baked, the air expands and helps make the resulting cake or whatever lighter.  This is basically how an angel food cake works.  Beat the egg whites till they're firm, then fold in the flour, sugar, and whatnot.  The egg whites -- and the trapped air -- provide the "fluffyness" of the cake.

I say cooking can be more like an art than a science, sure you can follow a recipe carefully and often get consistent results, but a truly wonderful culinary creation takes improvisation and imagination.

Cooking is both art and science.  Good cooks are those who have internalized the science of cooking -- though doubtless they don't think of it in those terms -- to the point that it becomes second nature.  Whereupon they can cook "by feel" or by intuition.  That's where the true art comes into play, and where the talents of the truly gifted chefs really shine.

i shall once again intercede, with a scientist whose science is food

Ah, good ol' Alton, he's always fun.  Alas, the videos are no longer available at the linked site.  (The link is good, but the vids aren't there any more.)  And me without cable tv, *sigh*.  Time to peruse YouTube, I guess.

As for those wussy little crème brûlée torches, they're just marketing gimmicks to get people to buy a really expensive, "proper" (read, "even cheaper") version of a cheap, pedestrian tool.  Bah, humbug.

[Nyil]

Jyrras is so cute in that last panel, it's like he's taking lessons from Nyil.

*ROFLSNERK*

Who do you think Nyil probably learned it from?


Edit: Also, the cake, does not appear to be a lie..

You guys suck You both suck so hardcore, if there was a.... a sucking contest you'd win hands down by sucking the entire universe into your sucky.. sucking... suckiness or something Dx Whatever, you both suck!

Also, I think that Jyrras should try his hand at molecular gastronomy. It's all the rage nowadays, and it literally turns cooking into a science, like chemistry! Cooking using a chemistry set - a few popular restaurants are doing it now! http://www.motorestaurant.com/

I just want to see Abel eat his words by giving Jyrras some form of cooking he'd be good at.

And also, D'ymkarra and Sofox both suck >

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Why, Nyil. Anyone would think you were upset, what with a cute little outburst like that. ;-]

[Gabi]

Cooking is both art and science.  Good cooks are those who have internalized the science of cooking -- though doubtless they don't think of it in those terms -- to the point that it becomes second nature.  Whereupon they can cook "by feel" or by intuition.  That's where the true art comes into play, and where the talents of the truly gifted chefs really shine.

I agree, but you don't normally see them going about cooking as if it were a scientific experiment (which would involve establishing all their hypotheses and their expected results before they cook, documenting every step of the process, then writing a report about the result, cross-checking it and comparing it to other related works, and drawing conclusions and making suggestions for future work; and that's not even counting the theoretical frame - as in where their present work fits among the field of cooking - and listing their motivations for cooking that particular meal).

I agree that science can influence and assist the art of cooking, but if cooking itself were treated as a science we'd be lucky to get one meal per month.

[Ignuus66]

Who cares if cooking is science or art? Let's settle for both and enjoy making/eating the food and the exploding coffee machines. (seems to be a thing hereabout, this is the third time in the neighborhood this week)

[justacritic]

Poor Nyil do you not realize there is an inverse relationship between being cute and being taken seriously? Worse it's a exponential relationship as well

[Lurkie]

Cooking is both art and science.  Good cooks are those who have internalized the science of cooking -- though doubtless they don't think of it in those terms -- to the point that it becomes second nature.  Whereupon they can cook "by feel" or by intuition.  That's where the true art comes into play, and where the talents of the truly gifted chefs really shine.

I agree, but you don't normally see them going about cooking as if it were a scientific experiment (which would involve establishing all their hypotheses and their expected results before they cook, documenting every step of the process, then writing a report about the result, cross-checking it and comparing it to other related works, and drawing conclusions and making suggestions for future work; and that's not even counting the theoretical frame - as in where their present work fits among the field of cooking - and listing their motivations for cooking that particular meal).

Which is why I said that good cooks don't think of cooking in those terms -- they aren't scientists.  (Well, they don't have to be; there's no reason why one can't be both.)  They do use observation and experience, and the occasional experiment, to form hypotheses about what would taste good, and what wouldn't.  But the formal scientific method is probably not something they'd use much.

Who cares if cooking is science or art? Let's settle for both and enjoy making/eating the food and the exploding coffee machines. (seems to be a thing hereabout, this is the third time in the neighborhood this week)

Exploding coffee machines?!?    Wow, you guys have got my old roomie beat -- even he never did anything like that...!

[Nyil]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=47qgz4ToBfE#t=27s

I'm telling you, man, Jyrras could be a kickin' cook, he just needs to get into that molecular gastronomy!

[D'ymkarra]

Poor Nyil do you not realize there is an inverse relationship between being cute and being taken seriously? Worse it's a exponential relationship as well

It's not that we don't take him seriously, we just have a really hard time getting past the cute before we can do so. He cooks up dishes that I personally would never have the patience to prepare..

[Nocturne of Night]

Poor Nyil do you not realize there is an inverse relationship between being cute and being taken seriously? Worse it's a exponential relationship as well

It's not that we don't take him seriously, we just have a really hard time getting past the cute before we can do so. He cooks up dishes that I personally would never have the patience to prepare..

Wait, him?!? Nvm, I think I know the relationship you're talking about, this one right? http://xkcd.com/231/

...

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Which is why I said that good cooks don't think of cooking in those terms -- they aren't scientists.  (Well, they don't have to be; there's no reason why one can't be both.)  They do use observation and experience, and the occasional experiment, to form hypotheses about what would taste good, and what wouldn't.  But the formal scientific method is probably not something they'd use much.

I agree that great cooks can just "go by feel" but those cookbook recipes come from somewhere! If they're consistent enough then it's irrelevant and they just measure the stuff they've always used. Cooking is fun b/c actual science requires a degree of precision that cooking can get away without, and that wiggle room can lead to two completely different recipes for the same thing that are both delicious!

(I'm now thinking about a cookie recipe in terms of how a chem paper may write it: To a stirred mixture of (blink) add (blank), stirring vigorously. Repeat for each wet ingredient, in order. Mixture of dry ingredients was added to reaction mixture for 1 min then stirred slowly until just mixed. Mixture was divided into rounded teaspoons and left to sit 10 min at 350 deg F. Product was obtained in 85% yield, with losses likely resulting from eating of dough by the preparer... yes, chem papers look roughly like this, but with really big words. Chem paper experimentals look like recipes to me, for whatever reason, just with overly convoluted language.)

[Lurkie]

I agree that great cooks can just "go by feel" but those cookbook recipes come from somewhere! If they're consistent enough then it's irrelevant and they just measure the stuff they've always used. Cooking is fun b/c actual science requires a degree of precision that cooking can get away without, and that wiggle room can lead to two completely different recipes for the same thing that are both delicious!

Actually, the modern cookbook, with its exact measurements and cooking times is a, well... modern development.  Back in "ye olden dayes," they were more a description of the ingredients, with maybe a description of how to prepare them.  The instructions were fairly sparse, too.  Basically, I think, folks were supposed to know how to cook, they just needed the list of ingredients and some pointers.  Here's a recipe for an Elizabethan "Savoury Pottage" -- what we could call a stew.  (This website has all sorts of interesting old recipes, so have fun.)  You can see that it's not exactly what we'd think of as a modern recipe.  :-)  Over the centuries, not only did our kitchens change (we no longer cook in a fireplace!), but our expectations of what a recipe should tell us did, too.

(I'm now thinking about a cookie recipe in terms of how a chem paper may write it [...]  Chem paper experimentals look like recipes to me, for whatever reason, just with overly convoluted language.)

Hah!  It's been many (many) years since I had to write a chemistry lab report, but that does sound familiar.  You're right, a chem paper is a sort of recipe, subject to sesquipedalian loquaciousness [TVTropes link not included ].  You might enjoy the Cooking for Engineers web site.  The recipe cards there are, shall we say, unique.