The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking
“What, are you blind?” TV chef Alton Brown deadpans into the camera. Whoosh! On cue, a Venetian blind drops down in front of him. Brown is whipping up a lemon meringue pie for Good Eats, his weekly romp in the kitchen for the Food Network, and the prop is supposed to help aspiring bakers visualize chemical reactions they can’t actually see.
“Let’s just say for a moment that this is a microscopic cross-section of our pie crust in the oven,” says Brown, reaching around to run his hand along the closed slats. “By the time the layers of fat start to melt, the protein structure formed by the flour and water needs to be set. That way, when the fat melts, it’ll look like this,” he says, twisting the rod to open the blind. Brown grabs hold of two slats in the middle and wiggles them up and down. “These are the nice flakes in our flaky crust. If the fats melt before the protein sets, we’ll have a real mess on our hands. Ten minutes in the refrigerator will keep that from happening.”
Protein structure? Microscopic cross-section? It sounds more like a half-baked high-school science lesson than a half-hour cooking show about pie. Who is this geek? And why doesn’t he tuck in his shirt? more…
