4 ms·

Food science is really interesting; I've kind of gotten into it as a hobby lately (having a background in chemical engineering and an obsessive interest in cook

Food science is really interesting; I've kind of gotten into it as a hobby lately (having a background in chemical engineering and an obsessive interest in cooking). Last night I was making some melted cheese for nachos and used sodium citrate to emulsify the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to sequester the calcium (weird aside: the non-numeric chemical formula for sodium citrate is NaCHO). It's fascinating to me how much work goes into this stuff. There are decades worth of research articles studying the effect of melting salts on cheese. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that processed foods don't taste dramatically better than restaurant food considering how much work goes into optimizing everything. I suppose a large part of this process is not strictly optimizing for flavor, but rather shelf life and cost among other factors. Although I do know a lot of Michelin star chefs will use whatever additives are necessary to make a dish taste as good as possible — at least if they don't have a strict focus on natural, locally sourced food.

roel_v 7y ago
" Last night I was making some melted cheese for nachos and used sodium citrate to emulsify the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to sequester the calcium " Can you expand on this for a non-chemist? What's the effect, flavor- or texture wise, of sequestering calcium?
- phonypc 7y ago
  Smooth texture, that doesn't break (separate into oil and protein) with heat. Those ingredients and/or similar ones are principally responsible for what makes "processed cheese" processed. So think Velveeta or Kraft Singles, but potentially made with higher quality cheese.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
    Good quality hard and semi-hard cheese made with rennet should melt and not separate. E.g. gruyere, cheddar, gouda or emmental, particularly the protected varieties. If good cheese didn't melt it would probably not be considered an attractive characteristic and it would not be something people bother to try and simulate with additives.
    - phonypc 7y ago
      You can of course melt almost any unprocessed cheese without separating it, but they all split if overheated and don't behave well with added liquid (e.g. in sauces) without assistance from some additive. Processed cheeses with these "melting salts" have categorically different melting characteristics, they aren't trying to merely simulate regular cheese; they start as out as regular cheese after all.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
        >> You can of course melt almost any unprocessed cheese without separating it, but they all split if overheated and don't behave well with added liquid (e.g. in sauces) without assistance from some additive. That is really not my experience. Are we both talking about good to high quality European hard and semi-hard cheeses, especially PDO varieties? Edit: come to think of it, I should probably also check what you mean by "overheated". E.g. in Greece, where I come from, saganaki [1] is a signature dish that consists of a slab of graviera or kefalotyri (hard cheeses, in the alpine style) deep-fried in batter. I've had my share of sagnaki and I've never seen one break and separate in the way you say. ______________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaki
        phonypc 7y ago
        Yes, some preparations even rely on cheese separating. E.g. parmesan tuiles, even when prepared with PDO Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano can be seen breaking and expelling their fat before crisping. Every preparation of onion soup I've seen, even when using proper Gruyere or Comte, has an oil slick on top that has been expelled from the cheese. The cheeses used in saganaki (which I've never seen battered, only fried directly) weep oil before they melt. Processed cheeses, on the other hand, will typically burn before they break. And they flow very differently when melted.
        YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
        In that case I have no idea what you're talking about :) I think we may be talking about different things. I don't eat processed cheese so I don't know how it behaves. A quick search on the internet tells me that processed cheese can be melted to the point it is poured. It is then used in sauces. For sure, you can't pour real cheese. So I'm talking about the kind of melting you see, e.g. in a raclette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM Yes, real cheese will weep when you heat it but that's not "oil". Depending on the age of the cheese, some of it is whey and the rest is butterfat. But your description of "breaking" makes it sound like you expect cheese to cleanly separate in a puddle of butterfat and a chunk of protein, whereas real cheese will melt into a viscous fluid. That is - if it's cheese that melts in the first place. For instance, feta or haloumi don't melt, etc. I suspect I might misunderstand your description of "break" though. Regarding saganaki, it is prepared with many different cheeses, normally Greek cheeses. I have no idea how Greek-style cheese behaves, that is prepared outside Greece, but feta will not melt and only weep whey, whereas graviera, kaseri, kefalotyri etc "yellow cheeses" (as we call them) will melt. Saganaki is battered (or sometimes rolled in flour) for this reason- to keep the cheese from spreading after it melts. That's how it's made in Greece. I guess it's made in a different fashion outside of Greece. Finally- although I've never tried to make tuiles from parmesan, there is a large industry of counterfeit Parmiggianio Reggiano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM Which might well explain ill-behaved "Parmiggiano Reggiano".
  - roel_v 7y ago
    That's cool, although I do somewhat have the same reaction as the poster downthread that I don't really have the experience that cheeses in my dishes separate. Either way, did you figure this out yourself from your chemistry background, or can you recommend a book that is "applied chemistry for dummies with a focus on cooking" without going all "modernist cuisine"? To me, cooking is applied chemistry, but the vast majority of all cook books are "here's a pretty picture, follow these exact steps to recreate".
    - phonypc 7y ago
      I am not the poster you originally responded to and have no formal background in chemistry. That said, On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen by Harold McGee is the prototypical recommendation for food science basics. The following link is a write-up more specific to processed cheese. https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/07/whats-really-in-american-cheese.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/07/whats-really-in-american...
uhhyeahdude 7y ago
I would happily contribute to the Patreon of anyone writing up their experiments in practical food science at home...
- ipsum2 7y ago
  Check out Food Lab by Kenji Lopez Alt: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab My favorite article is one where he reverse engineers a McDonald fry. His reverse-sear steak is also good.
perl4ever 7y ago
"Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that processed foods don't taste dramatically better than restaurant food" 1. Don't restaurants serve processed food, not to mention with fewer constraints since they don't shove the ingredient list in your face? 2. Who says the reason for a zillion weird ingredients is optimizing the consumer experience? Maybe it's actually a traditional way of trying to prevent competitors from duplicating a product? Recently, I've noticed an increasing number of products in mainstream US grocery stores that are more or less "processed food", but they have a small number of normal food-type ingredients, in dramatic contrast to those that are full of additives and weird stuff. Yet they aren't marketed as "organic" or otherwise suggestive of orthorexia.

roel_v 7y ago

" Last night I was making some melted cheese for nachos and used sodium citrate to emulsify the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to sequester the calcium " Can you expand on this for a non-chemist? What's the effect, flavor- or texture wise, of sequestering calcium?

phonypc 7y ago
Smooth texture, that doesn't break (separate into oil and protein) with heat. Those ingredients and/or similar ones are principally responsible for what makes "processed cheese" processed. So think Velveeta or Kraft Singles, but potentially made with higher quality cheese.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  Good quality hard and semi-hard cheese made with rennet should melt and not separate. E.g. gruyere, cheddar, gouda or emmental, particularly the protected varieties. If good cheese didn't melt it would probably not be considered an attractive characteristic and it would not be something people bother to try and simulate with additives.
  - phonypc 7y ago
    You can of course melt almost any unprocessed cheese without separating it, but they all split if overheated and don't behave well with added liquid (e.g. in sauces) without assistance from some additive. Processed cheeses with these "melting salts" have categorically different melting characteristics, they aren't trying to merely simulate regular cheese; they start as out as regular cheese after all.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
      >> You can of course melt almost any unprocessed cheese without separating it, but they all split if overheated and don't behave well with added liquid (e.g. in sauces) without assistance from some additive. That is really not my experience. Are we both talking about good to high quality European hard and semi-hard cheeses, especially PDO varieties? Edit: come to think of it, I should probably also check what you mean by "overheated". E.g. in Greece, where I come from, saganaki [1] is a signature dish that consists of a slab of graviera or kefalotyri (hard cheeses, in the alpine style) deep-fried in batter. I've had my share of sagnaki and I've never seen one break and separate in the way you say. ______________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaki
      - phonypc 7y ago
        Yes, some preparations even rely on cheese separating. E.g. parmesan tuiles, even when prepared with PDO Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano can be seen breaking and expelling their fat before crisping. Every preparation of onion soup I've seen, even when using proper Gruyere or Comte, has an oil slick on top that has been expelled from the cheese. The cheeses used in saganaki (which I've never seen battered, only fried directly) weep oil before they melt. Processed cheeses, on the other hand, will typically burn before they break. And they flow very differently when melted.
        YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
        In that case I have no idea what you're talking about :) I think we may be talking about different things. I don't eat processed cheese so I don't know how it behaves. A quick search on the internet tells me that processed cheese can be melted to the point it is poured. It is then used in sauces. For sure, you can't pour real cheese. So I'm talking about the kind of melting you see, e.g. in a raclette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM Yes, real cheese will weep when you heat it but that's not "oil". Depending on the age of the cheese, some of it is whey and the rest is butterfat. But your description of "breaking" makes it sound like you expect cheese to cleanly separate in a puddle of butterfat and a chunk of protein, whereas real cheese will melt into a viscous fluid. That is - if it's cheese that melts in the first place. For instance, feta or haloumi don't melt, etc. I suspect I might misunderstand your description of "break" though. Regarding saganaki, it is prepared with many different cheeses, normally Greek cheeses. I have no idea how Greek-style cheese behaves, that is prepared outside Greece, but feta will not melt and only weep whey, whereas graviera, kaseri, kefalotyri etc "yellow cheeses" (as we call them) will melt. Saganaki is battered (or sometimes rolled in flour) for this reason- to keep the cheese from spreading after it melts. That's how it's made in Greece. I guess it's made in a different fashion outside of Greece. Finally- although I've never tried to make tuiles from parmesan, there is a large industry of counterfeit Parmiggianio Reggiano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM Which might well explain ill-behaved "Parmiggiano Reggiano".
- roel_v 7y ago
  That's cool, although I do somewhat have the same reaction as the poster downthread that I don't really have the experience that cheeses in my dishes separate. Either way, did you figure this out yourself from your chemistry background, or can you recommend a book that is "applied chemistry for dummies with a focus on cooking" without going all "modernist cuisine"? To me, cooking is applied chemistry, but the vast majority of all cook books are "here's a pretty picture, follow these exact steps to recreate".
  - phonypc 7y ago
    I am not the poster you originally responded to and have no formal background in chemistry. That said, On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen by Harold McGee is the prototypical recommendation for food science basics. The following link is a write-up more specific to processed cheese. https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/07/whats-really-in-american-cheese.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/07/whats-really-in-american...

uhhyeahdude 7y ago

I would happily contribute to the Patreon of anyone writing up their experiments in practical food science at home...

ipsum2 7y ago
Check out Food Lab by Kenji Lopez Alt: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab My favorite article is one where he reverse engineers a McDonald fry. His reverse-sear steak is also good.

perl4ever 7y ago

"Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that processed foods don't taste dramatically better than restaurant food" 1. Don't restaurants serve processed food, not to mention with fewer constraints since they don't shove the ingredient list in your face? 2. Who says the reason for a zillion weird ingredients is optimizing the consumer experience? Maybe it's actually a traditional way of trying to prevent competitors from duplicating a product? Recently, I've noticed an increasing number of products in mainstream US grocery stores that are more or less "processed food", but they have a small number of normal food-type ingredients, in dramatic contrast to those that are full of additives and weird stuff. Yet they aren't marketed as "organic" or otherwise suggestive of orthorexia.