Mix and match - chemistry

"It’s the intricate interplay of ingredients that truly captivates."

Ciaron Connolly/Medium

I am finally going back to the food curriculum in schools. I confess I have been putting off chemistry for ages. Both because it's so obvious, and also because I am not a scientist, and I find it all a bit overwhelming. Sure I did a bit of chemistry at school and so know the basics. I am also confused by where physics ends and chemistry begins, where chemistry ends and biology begins, and every other mix that exists in the sciences. It's all so vast and becoming vaster with all the subsciences that now exist, and that, at some point in distant time I shall get around to. In my time it was just Physics, Chemistry and Biology. As knowledge in every area has increased exponentially, each broad area of knowledge has had to be subdivided into ever more specific strands.

So I was quite relieved to find this diagram and the words below in an article on LInkedIn by Sabri Manai:

"Chemistry is known as a multidisciplinary subject within the field of science. It links other areas of knowledge such as physics, biochemistry, astronomy, mathematics, geography among others. Initially, the studies that were based on our environment were termed as natural sciences. Therefore, the relationship between these matters helps us to clearly explain the complex phenomena that happen to us through nature. Due to the specializations that occurred in the natural science, scientists were able to come up with four major fields of natural science namely chemistry, physics, geology and biology. With a quantifiable passage of time, the studies of each field of natural science became more specialized or delimited, and new sciences emerged such as biophysics, biochemistry, geochemistry among others." Sabri Manai/LinkedIn

Now I suspect that a physicist might put physics at the centre, a biologist - biology and so on. And I'm sure you could make a case for any of them. Personally I would make a case for Geography. And looking at that diagram I would have thought that geology is a sub-section of geography, environmental science - of biology and astronomy of physics.

Heston Blumenthal - one of the most experimental - scientifically speaking - of chefs, goes as far as saying that history is the end result:

"Physics happens in the kitchen, chemistry happens in the kitchen, biology happens in food, and history is a record of that. So a recipe is history. The action of chopping up ingredients is physics; as particles react and generate new flavours, that’s chemistry; eating it is biology. We evolve, that’s history. " Heston Blumenthal

Fundamentally everything that exists, both physically and in the mind, the cells, is interconnected. There is always a temptation to put something at the centre, as I found when looking for an illustration for this. This is the closest I found to the idea that I had of many different centres of different sizes, but all connected eventually if remotely in some cases, to each other.

One of the most individual and interesting things about chemistry is the double meaning of the word. Of course it was very tempting to call this post Lessons in Chemistry - a book that many of you will have read, or seen as a series on streamed TV. And very excellent it was - not the least because it did indeed exploit that double meaning of chemistry - emotion and science, as well as bringing the science into the kitchen. The chemistry of relationships and the chemistry of things. The two are polar opposites are they not? Hard science, and love - of all kinds. So how did the one word come to be applied to both emotion and science. Well personally I think the common ingredient is 'mixing'.

A relationship, whether romantic or familial, if you want to be cold-blooded about it, involves various chemical components that bond somehow. I can't explain all the theories because I'm not a scientist, but I do know there is a lot of scientific jargon, to explain the dizziness of a kiss, the heartbeat that jumps because of a smile or a touch ... They say it can happen at first sight - although I can't say that has ever happened to me. A first kiss maybe, or a first hug in the case of my husband. But not love - that is something that builds over time. But yes the chemistry of that first kiss, that first hug was sufficient to lead to further exploration, further experimentation. Sometimes leading somewhere. Sometimes not.

Chemistry, the science, at least in the school curriculum, is a case of learning basic information about elements, and then combinations of those elements, and the subsequent splitting of those combinations, through experimentation. And if that's not cooking then I don't know what is:

Ferran Adriá the ultimate exponent of food chemistry which led to dishes such as the one shown here - magic constructed from science was definite that cooking is scientific method:

"When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant." Ferran Adriá

All recipe developers these days - well at least those that publishers promote - test those recipes over and over again. Ottolenghi is famous for his test kitchen where different cooks come together to combine (mix) their knowledge, ideas, and yes, emotions, to create something new and hopefully delicious, with perhaps the benefit of being healthy. And then they apply rigorous testing over and over again to the recipe they have devised until a precise recipe is arrived at:

"If something says 1/3 of a teaspoon, you'll bet it's been tested with a ½ of a teaspoon and a ¼ of a teaspoon." Tara Wigley

Which exactly mirrors what chemists do in their labs. That said, some cooks are much more scientific than others. Ottolenghi's Test Kitchen looks much like a very flash large-scale kitchen. René Redzipi's Nordic Lab looks more like a science lab:

But then their aim is slightly different - a product for the home cook in the case of Ottolenghi, and haute cuisine of an experimental kind for Redzipi:

Both to be admired for completely different reasons.

So yes, food as part of the chemistry curriculum is a no-brainer really. We all know that chemistry is part of cooking and of food. The Maillard reaction, fermentation, the uses of acid, leavening, emulsification, how raw food becomes cooked food - it can all be described in chemical scientific terms. Health and nutrition are also frequently described in chemical terms. Indeed often my eyes glaze over when I read some of those things. Look up the health benefits of spinach for example and you will find you have to scroll down your screen several times as words like oxalates, zeaxanthin, lutein, quercetin ... flash by. And do you have time, or interest to discover what they all are? Only if you are a chemist I suspect.

I'm pretty sure that food and cooking play a part in many chemistry curriculums. Experiments with mixing and matching, applying heat, adding acid and then looking at how the chemical composition has changed, might well make the topic more interesting than mixing a test tube of this and a test tube of that. Just be careful - in the kitchen and in the lab.

Or start experimenting more in your kitchen. Take two random ingredients and see what you can make when you mix them together in some way.

YEARS GONE BY

April 2 - I see that yesterday I got ahead of myself and thought I was already on April 3. So today, here is the missing April 2

2024 - Nik Sharma - a new Ottolenghi?

2023 - Psarasoupa me avgolemeno

2022 - Nothing

2021 - The great barbecue debate

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Eating well locally

2018 - Glazed ham - trying to please the family but not quite succeeding

2017 - Destination dining