Cooking food is a basic human need. So you might think that it would be easy for us to cook our own food. But it turns out that cooking your own food is more complicated than you might think.
The uncooked food that you cook isn’t exactly the same as the cooked food that you eat. In other words, you can heat it up all you want, but there’s a good chance that it won’t be the same food—at least not chemically speaking.
If you’re interested in learning more about how food is going to change as it heats up, keep reading, assuming that your interest hasn’t already been piqued. But be warned—at this point, things are going to get a little scientific.
The so-called Maillard reaction is named after Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in the early 1900s. Maillard described the reactions first in the context of baked bread, but it turns out they are important in many other foods too.
The most important thing about these reactions is that they’re not just about taste; they’re responsible for giving baked goods their golden brown color and giving fried foods their crispy texture.
The reaction involves the amino acid tyrosine in meat and other proteins (especially those with higher amounts of cysteine). This reaction releases heat-sensitive chemicals called reactive aldehydes, which react with sugars in the food being cooked to produce new flavors and smells.
The Maillard reaction is also responsible for the flavor and aroma of foods like bread. The reaction occurs between amino acids with reducing sugars and produces melanoidins, which are brown pigments that give the crust its dark color. This makes the Maillard reaction important to baking because it contributes to crust development and coloration.
At the end of the day, most of us will simply throw that next piece of bacon onto the pan with nary a second thought about how it transforms into crispy goodness every time. Despite this, every day we rely on these complex chemical reactions, all in our collective pursuit to satisfy our taste buds on the regular. How’s that food for thought?
