Thursday, May 15, 2008

Quantitative cooking

All my finals are finished and I'm just working on doing my term paper for my nanotechnology course. I'm a gigantic procrastinator, so I haven't even chosen a topic until the day before it's due (not a problem since it's only a 4 page paper). In skimming possible topics though, I found this journal article which uses nanotubes to detect the presence of chemicals in chili and hot sauces, providing an accurate measure of just how spicy that food is.

Completely silly, but still damn cool.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am an enemy of quantitative cooking. My girlfriend, who can barely make prepackaged noodles, cannot understand how I can cook virtually anything in the grocery store without reading a recipe or measuring an ingredient.

Cooking is an artform. It is done with the heart, not whatever it is that you measure food with.

Anonymous said...

I think he's refering to quantive electrolysis, so it's cooking food with electricity. Although there still are measurements.

Bill said...

People love or hate the recipes on my blog because I believe in the Zen of Cooking. You have to be One with the Food.

Recipes are for cakes and I'm totally Catholic about cakes. Follow the recipe, unless you are a genius or an idiot.

For everything else, you have to have a feel for what works and what doesn't. Sauces, especially, require attention and tweaking and no amount of science will improve a sauce. Bread is the same. You have to feel the dough because it's affected by the batch of flour, strength of the yeast and humidity among other factors. Nothing like experience!

But, regarding procrastination, I call it "ripening." Some things ripen early, others take some time. The Expert or Master Procrastinator can judge exactly how much ripening is required and step in at just the correct time.

I am a Senior Master Procrastinator Specialist and I'll send you my consulting fee schedule when I get around to it.

Anonymous said...

I think he's refering to quantive electrolysis, so it's cooking food with electricity. Although there still are measurements.