The Physics Behind Cooking Intelligence

Table: MATH1
Experimentation location: School, Home
Regulated Research (Form 1c): No
Project continuation (Form 7): No

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Abstract:

Bibliography/Citations:

 

  1. Fundamentals of Momentum, Heat, and Mass Transfer, 5th Edition, J. R. Welty, et. al.
  2. Catching Fire – How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham.
  3. Juliane FLOURY, Sophie JEANSON, Samar ALY, Sylvie LORTAL, Determination of the diffusion coefficients of small solutes in cheese: A review, Dairy Sci. Technol. 90 (2010) 477–508. DOI: 10.1051/dst/2010011.
  4. Theodoros H. Varzakas, Gareth C. Leach, Cleanthes J. Israilides, Dimitrios Arapoglou, Theoretical and experimental approaches towards the determination of solute effective diffusivities in foods, Enzyme and Microbial Technology 37 (2005) 29–41. doi:10.1016/j.enzmictec.2004.06.015.
  5. J. Welti-Chanes, F. Vergara-Balderas, D. Bermu'dez-Aguirre, Transport phenomena in food engineering: basic concepts and advances, Journal of Food Engineering 67 (2005) 113–128. doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2004.05.053
  6. G. Volpato, E.M.Z. Michielin, S.R.S. Ferreira, J.C.C. Petrus, Kinetics of the diffusion of sodium chloride in chicken breast (pectoralis major) during curing, Journal of Food Engineering 79 (2007) 779–785. doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2006.02.043
  7. Danae Doulia, K. Tzia & V. Gekas (2000) A knowledge base for the apparent mass diffusion coefficient (DEFF) of foods, International Journal of Food Properties, 3:1, 1-14, DOI: 10.1080/10942910009524613
  8. N. Graiver, A. Pinotti, A. Califano, N. Zaritzky, Diffusion of sodium chloride in pork tissue, Journal of Food Engineering, Volume 77, Issue 4, December 2006, Pages 910-918.
  9. Clémentine Lauverjat, Clément de Loubens, Isabelle Déléris, Ioan Cristian Tréléa, Isabelle Souchon, Rapid determination of partition and diffusion properties for salt and aroma compounds in complex food matrices, Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 407–415.
  10. Thomas A Vilgis, Soft matter food physics—the physics of food and cooking, Rep. Prog. Phys. 78 (2015) 124602 (82pp).
  11. Ikuko Maeda, Akemi K. Horigane, Mitsuru Yoshida, and Yoshihiro Aikawa, Water Diffusion in Buckwheat Noodles and Wheat Noodles during Boiling and Holding as Determined from MRI and Rectangular Cylinder Diffusion Model, Food Sci. Technol. Res., 15 (2), 107 – 116, 2009.
  12. F. JOUSSE, W. AGTEROF, T. JONGEN, M. KOOLSCHIJN, A. VISSER, AND R. VREEKER, Flavor Release from Cooking Oil during Heating, Vol. 67, Nr. 8, 2002—JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE 2987.
  13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-cured_meat
  14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeotgal
  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_pork
  16. Yifei “Jenny” Jin, Lisa R. Wang, and Jian Jim Wang, Physics in turkey cooking: Revisit the Panofsky formula, AIP Advances 11, 115316 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0067811
  17. Lisa R. Wang, Yifei “Jenny” Jin, and Jian Jim Wang, A Simple and Low-cost Experimental Method to Determine the Thermal Diffusivity of Various Types of Foods, American Journal of Physics, Vol.90, Issue 8, https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0087135 DOI: 10.1119/5.0087135 August, 2022.
  18. Yifei “Jenny” Jin, Lisa R. Wang, and Jian Jim Wang, A Simple Experimental Method to Determine the Diffusion Coefficient of Salt in Various Types of Foods, Unpublished.

Additional Project Information

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Research Plan:

First, we will conduct a literature review to study previously published work related to the physics of cooking as much as possible. 

Second, we will build a systematic physics model to simulate and understand the cooking processes from both thermal and mass transport angles. 

Third, we know that both thermal diffusion and molecular diffusion (or mass transport) are needed to understand cooking physics. We will need to find an effective and simple method to measure the key physics parameters to characterize the thermal and mass diffusion process. Once we have our own measurement data, we will compare them with the data published in the literature. 

Fourth, we will use the measured parameters and then apply them to the physics model, and then we will calculate various cooking cases and understand and explain the reasons behind various cooking scenarios in a quantitative way.

Last, we will summarize all the discoveries and prepare a scientific report. 

Questions and Answers

 

1. What was the major objective of your project and what was your plan to achieve it? 

       a. Was that goal the result of any specific situation, experience, or problem you encountered?  

       b. Were you trying to solve a problem, answer a question, or test a hypothesis?

The major objective of this project is to understand the physics and science behind culinary arts.  As a human species, we have been cooking since we were called intelligent animals or even before that. As Richard Wrangham states in his famous book "Catching Fire – how cooking made us human," cooking, which provided our ancestors with cooked foods, particularly meat, could even have defined or shaped our evolution process.

Through millions of years of our development in cooking, tons of intelligence have been invented, developed, improved, and then instilled back into the cooking process’s refinery from its masters.

Why can’t we cook the duck eggs while getting them salted to the way we like within the same process and duration? Cooking the eggs only takes about 5 to 10 mins. However, the salting process to make the famous salted duck eggs requires 20 to 30 days. A similar question exists for salted pork, salmon, duck, vegetables, and many more salted foods.

For the famous French Fries, in a cooking oil bath with a temperature around 150-160 ℃, with a dimension of typical 5x5 mm in cross-section, it only takes 30 seconds to get them cooked, i.e., to reach over 100 ℃ across the whole fries. Why do we need to have a double frying process in the standard McDonald’s recipe, with the first frying for 5 mins at 163 ℃? That alone is ten times the duration required to heat the fries from the heating perspective, and the second frying for 2-3 mins at an even higher temperature like 180 ℃. The intervals between the two fryings can be days or even months. 

Why would different types of noodles or spaghetti with similar cross-section dimensions (diameters) need a cooking time while being soaked in boiling water, ranging from 1-3 mins to 12-14 mins, an order of magnitude in difference?

While Chinese stir-frying dishes only take about 3 mins to cook, is it because of the need for the heating process alone? If we look at the hotpot, the similar-sized food only takes about 20 seconds to dip in the 100 ℃ pot to be ready to eat (but with a dipping source to gain flavor). What prevents us from further shrinking down the cooking time in stir-frying cooking?

Questions like the above can go on and on…

During cooking, the temperature profile, i.e., how long, how fast, and how high the heating process goes, is the key to leading to successful dishes. However, the flavor and texture, which are governed by the distributions of salt, sugar, spice, oil, moisture, and many other parameters, are also crucial to achieving the best taste and overall result. Both the heating and flavoring processes are governed by essentially a similar transfer equation, although the key diffusion coefficient is different in these two processes.

Cooking reflects human’s highest intelligence from a scientific perspective. This work wants to investigate the essential physics and science behind intelligence in cooking in order to provide clear answers to the questions above.

2. What were the major tasks you had to perform in order to complete your project?

       a. For teams, describe what each member worked on.

First, we will conduct a literature review to study previously published work related to the physics of cooking as much as possible. 

Second, we will build a systematic physics model to simulate and understand the cooking processes from both thermal and mass transport angles. 

Third, we know that both thermal diffusion and molecular diffusion (or mass transport) are needed to understand cooking physics. We will need to find an effective and simple method to measure the key physics parameters to characterize the thermal and mass diffusion process. Once we have our own measurement data, we will compare them with the data published in the literature. 

Fourth, we will use the measured parameters and then apply them to the physics model, and then we will calculate various cooking cases and understand and explain the reasons behind various cooking scenarios in a quantitative way.

Last, we will summarize all the discoveries and prepare a scientific report. 

3. What is new or novel about your project?

       a. Is there some aspect of your project's objective, or how you achieved it that you haven't done before?

       b. Is your project's objective, or the way you implemented it, different from anything you have seen?

       c. If you believe your work to be unique in some way, what research have you done to confirm that it is?

There is a couple of new progress in this research work.

First, five different types of foods were studied, and their diffusion coefficient of salt was experimentally determined with a simple and low-cost method that was invented in this research. The foods which are studied include potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, taro, and radish. We pre-cut the foods into a spherical shape with known diameters and then brine them into the pre-mixed salt solution. After a certain soaking time, the ball-shaped piece is taken out, and cut out a small piece from its center. A compact salt meter (LAQUAtwin-salt-11) made by Horiba was used to determine the salt concentration. The salt concentration at the center of the piece was measured as the diameter or the soaking time was used as a variable. We then fit the measured data with the simulation. We are able to determine the following diffusion coefficient data with the good matching between the measurement data and the simulation results. Furthermore, the diffusion coefficient of salt in potatoes was also measured at 100. The activation energy is thus determined to be around 74meV or 7.13 kJ/mol.

Second, the physics behind cooking time and preparation method is carefully studied and quantitatively presented, which reveals the most interesting science behind various recipes, tricks, and mysteries to achieve optimal temperature and flavor in cooking and culinary arts. Firstly, the cooking time's square power relation with the food's physical dimension explains the finest thoughts behind fast cooking and why Chinese and Indian foods prefer shredding the food into tiny pieces prior to cooking. Secondly, the orders of difference in magnitude between thermal and mass diffusivity coefficients explain many food preparation methods used widely throughout centuries of human history in Eastern and Western culinary cultures.

4. What was the most challenging part of completing your project?

      a. What problems did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?

      b. What did you learn from overcoming these problems?

We have encountered many challenges throughout this research. For instance, we have to develop our own methods to measure the diffusion coefficient of salt. The measurement method used in the literature requires expensive equipment and other complicated experimental conditions, which we don’t have. In inventing our own method, we had to be creative and think outside the box. We studied literature thoroughly and carefully and eventually came up with our own method. In this process, we gained more understanding of the scientific research method and the patience and persistence required to make breakthroughs.

5. If you were going to do this project again, are there any things you would you do differently the next time?

Yes, there are always areas we can improve. But overall, we are very happy with the overall progress and our methods and executions.

6. Did working on this project give you any ideas for other projects? 

Yes, understanding cooking science is interesting and more work is needed. For instance, we found out that the thermal diffusion coefficient is temperature dependent, and so is the mass diffusion coefficient. We intend to study them further. 

7. How did COVID-19 affect the completion of your project?

COVID-19 doesn't affect the completion of this project.