Chemistry of Food and Cooking
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Waffles. Wonderful, wondrous, wild, Waffles! What are they? Well, if you look at them from a historical perspective some crazy thing that came out of Greece then got revamped and transformed in central Europe until the Belgians got a hold of them. From there they were warped and distorted into something completely different. Now if you look at them from a chemical perspective, they are much different. They contain milk, eggs, and other ingredients, but at the moment I don't really care about those, what I want you to care about is the sugar and cinnamon contents. Our experiment was guided by the question of: Can we make a waffle the best possible waffle by change crispness, and sweetness by changing the sugar, and cinnamon contents? Our results revealed that sugar and cinnamon changes the crispness, as well as the sweetness. If you read our lab write up you will find more specifics about what amounts change what, but I am here to tell you why.
The reason why sugar affects the level of crispness is because of two main reactions. The first is just the caramelization of the actual sugars, which is the process of ripping apart the sugars into different types of polymers, and the release of water. Just to add confusion these polymers one of them is called diacetyl which is responsible for the change in color of the sugar. This reaction could have occurred, but the problem with it is that we just had barely enough sugars to start this reaction, but it was not the main reason why sugar changed the crispness, and sweetness of the waffles. The second reaction is called the Maillard reaction, which is famously the process behind baking pastries, and bread. The amino acids have a nucleophilic group that reacts with the carbonyl group of the sugar. The nucleophilic group is made up of Nitrogen, and two hydrogens. That group really responds with carbon, which is a big surprise look at the other reactant, it's in the name. Carbonyl group, are compounds which have carbon that is doubly bonded with oxygen. But the carbonyl that we are talking about is called Aldehyde. When these two get to a high enough temperature, and correct orientation they will react. The thing is, this reaction happens between sugars and amino acids, which are in proteins. So depending on what is there (proteins in milk, butter, and flower) will change what it will actually be the product. Not to mention this process also happens with the cinnamon. Because what makes cinnamon, cinnamon is a compound called cinnamaldehyde. Cinnamaldehyde has plenty of carbon, in amateur effect the formula is C6H5CH. This means that it reacts with the nucleophilic group of the amino acids. The product of both of these reactions change the crispness, by being the root cause of it. With that being said, there are specific requirements for these reactions to occur. They have to happen at about 140°C, for the Maillard reaction, and about 160°C for caramelization (All sugars will start reacting, except for lactose which starts at 203°C). In principle the more these reactions occur the crisper the waffles become, and this is what happened. With all of that being said, in the future, I would like to play with temperature more to see if we can hit that activation energy at the right threshold. I say that because we didn't have direct control Once again you can see the actual results in our lab write up. Now, what are the compounding effects of changing the amount of sugar and cinnamon? Well, during the actual cooking of the waffles, when both sugar and cinnamon can start to undergo caramelization, and the Maillard reaction the more sugars and cinnamons that are available makes these reactions more likely to happen. By having much more sugar, there will be more of the caramelization reaction, which in turn creates different types of polymers that link together slightly stronger forming crystal structures that aren't visible to the naked eye. The same thing happens with the Maillard reaction, where sequence there is more to react there is a high likelihood that the reactions will occur. |