Chicken meat is being marinated.

Do you know how to cook? Do you help your mother prepare your viands? Did you know that many science concepts and principles, especially from the field of chemistry, are actually involved in cooking? According to Shirley Corriher, a world-renowed biochemist-turned-cook, “Cooking is all about chemistry and knowing some facts can help chefs understand why recipes go wrong… Cooking is essentially a series of chemical reactions…”

In Preparation

The chemistry of cooking starts when the food is being prepared. It ends when you eat the cooked food. Chemistry is involved when you thaw frozen meat, melt butter, dissolve sugar, salt meat or fish, chop vegetables, and add vinegar (changes pH).

Chemistry in food preparation is best exhibited in marinating. In this process, meat, fish or vegetables is soaked in seasoned liquids (e.g., vinegar, wine, soy sauce, calamansi juice, etc.) before they are cooked. This is done to make dishes tastier or to tenderize the said ingredients.

So, how does it happen? When meat is marinated with wine, the alcohol content of the wine “pulls out” the flavor of the meat so that it can contribute to the flavor of the sauce. Since alcohol is a solvent, it can dissolve both fat-soluble and water-soluble compounds found in the meat.

In Cooking

Heat is a major part of the cooking process. Food is heated either by boiling, frying, grilling, roasting, etc. When you increase the temperature of the food, you increase the speed of its molecules. The greater their speed, the more the molecules collide.

The collisions between molecules can lead to changes in the molecular structures of the food by creating new molecules. This is an example of a chemical reaction. The new molecules have different characteristics, colors, flavors, and textures from the original molecules.

Different chemical reactions are needed to cook various types of food. For example, a different reaction is required to break down proteins present in an uncooked egg while another reaction is needed to change the structure of starch found in an uncooked potato.

Boiling is a method of cooking that helps food becomes tender. It can bring out the juice in meat, fruits and vegetables to help cook them faster. Boiling can also release vitamins and minerals from food. For example, when chicken meat is boiled with papaya to make tinola, the papain in papaya is released to make the chicken easier to cook.

Another example of a cooking method which undergoes a chemical process is grilling. Grilling food involves a chemical reaction called Maillard reaction. It happens between an amino acid and a reducing sugar. In this process, the meat being grilled creates hundreds of different flavor compounds. When continuously heated, these compounds break down to form more new compounds, and so on. This makes grilled foods very tasty.

Other examples of cooking process that involve chemistry are:
• Caramelization. This results from heat breaking down proteins into simple sugars, thus giving food a slightly sweet taste;
• Baking. Yeast is added to the dough. The yeast “eats” the sugar and ferments it, creating alcohol and carbon dioxide. The latter is responsible for raising bread.

So before you heat up your pan and start cooking, it is better to know some chemistry principles to help you cook your food better and faster. Sometimes, it pays to know a little science, even when cooking food!